tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-76067330044574321822018-05-24T11:26:06.943-07:00Fiji DiariesEver moved half way around the world to a place you've never been? Me neither.
This blog will be a record of mine and my family's discovery of the South Pacific as we up sticks after 21 years in the North East of England and move to Suva, Fiji.
MaryBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14910505245295673426noreply@blogger.comBlogger46125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7606733004457432182.post-85341087702261351422015-04-13T09:52:00.000-07:002015-04-13T09:54:11.740-07:00Circumnavigation (or Ending up exactly where you started)Emotionally, I felt ready to leave Fiji. Logistically, however, it was very difficult. The process for exporting locally acquired pets is long and tedious and shipping companies will show no shame in their efforts to rip you off by charging you for all sorts of mysteriously vague line-items. Then there are the endless trips to the vets, one of which referred to the cats as mongrels and the other said that they looked healthy, yet pretentious. We now call them our pretentious mongrels, though the correct term for them is Fiji Specials. I’m thinking of making them all little biker jackets. You think I’m joking, I’m thinking YouTube sensation.<br /><br />And of course there was the worry – the cats' trip door to door from Suva to Northumberland took 56 hours. When I complained about the ground crews being nonchalant in their attitude towards my concern for the cats’ well-being to husband while I was en route, he send me the following email:<br /><br />Desk man: ‘Are the three cats ok’?<br /><br />Man in hold: ‘What f..ing cats?’<br /><br />Desk man: ‘Ma'am, he says they are doing fine’<br /><br />You: ‘Can you ask if their water is full’<br /><br />Desk man: ‘Is their water full?’<br /><br />Man in hold: ‘You’re kidding right?’<br /><br />Desk man: ‘Ma'am he says they are purr fect!! And the water has been replenished with pure Fiji water to suit their pretensions’<br /><br />You: ‘Oh that’s wonderful! Thank You’<br /><br />Desk man: ‘The lady says thanks mate!’<br /><br />Man in hold: ‘F… off’<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TVEcCoAnU9E/VSvwL5ahezI/AAAAAAAAA0E/tpq_A3YYnxk/s1600/Cropped%2Bcat%2Bphoto.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TVEcCoAnU9E/VSvwL5ahezI/AAAAAAAAA0E/tpq_A3YYnxk/s1600/Cropped%2Bcat%2Bphoto.jpg" height="192" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Adjusting to a temperate climate in a house with all the mod cons isn't easy</span></td></tr></tbody></table>Of course I was overweight at the airport and my cute carry on didn't fit in the Fiji Airways cabin bag checker no matter how I massaged (squashed) it. Now I’m not the most stylish person in the world, but I have certain fashion requirements when I travel. First, I wouldn't be caught dead in a pair of tennis shoes in an airport. Never. No way. The only time any sort of sporty footwear is okay on planes is if you’re travelling to a mountainous destination when it’s acceptable to wear hiking boots to save space and weight in your luggage. And my carry on must be cute. So it was with great reluctance that my vital travelling items were transferred from my cute cabin bag to my loud stripy beach bag that has been embellished with rust stains and a fine peppering of mildew spots during our time in Fiji.<br /><br />The flight to Sydney from Nadi was a breeze – I was reading a good book and the few hours flew by (literally). But the Sydney to Dubai leg…. Even using my sensory deprivation kit (neck pillow, ear plugs + noise cancelling headset, and eye shades) which, when used properly, has the uncanny ability to squeeze time by a factor of at least four, the 14 hours seemed like a lifetime. I made a last minute, expensive, decision to check into the Dubai airport hotel for the seven hour layover. At least half of the time that I should have been sleeping I spent trying to figure out how to work the shower and turn off all of the lights using the myriad of switches dotted throughout the room. It was like some sort of episode out of the Candid Camera. But it wasn't funny. It was more like the Twilight Zone. I may have even shouted “why are you mocking me?” to no one in particular when I was standing, freezing in the shower. In the middle of the desert.<br /><br />So far I have a worryingly lack of culture shock symptoms, besides binge eating everything that I've missed within the first couple of weeks of being home. Walker Sweet Chilli Crisps, shepherd’s pie made with Bisto instant onion gravy, a wedge of Stilton, jam roly poly with custard and a Tunnock’s caramel wafer? Don’t mind if I do!<br /><br />The only time I've felt out of my depth was when I chose to ride in the front seat of a double-decker bus in Newcastle. I love the view of the city from up there. Or at least I did. This time it felt like I was on Mr Toad’s Wild Ride without a seat belt. The upper stories of the shop fronts whizzed by at unnatural speeds. It was mesermising – in a bad way. It took around ten minutes for me to get the nerve up to stand up and move (actually sort of crawl) to a seat away from the front window.<br /><br />Time is a funny thing. When I was in Fiji I felt like I’d been gone from the UK forever. As soon as I walked in the door of our home in England, I felt like I’d never left. It’s like I've come home from the longest holiday of my life and it’s taking a really, really long time to unpack. The first three things to come out of the last box from storage that I opened were a wooden model of the Cutty Sark, a black leather jacket and my potato ricer. Evidence, if it was required, of the chaos of moving half way around the world. However, it’s starting to feel like the pain of childbirth – it might just seem like a good idea to do it all again in a couple of years…<br /><div><br /></div>MaryBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14910505245295673426noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7606733004457432182.post-55548322106692393202015-02-28T02:40:00.000-08:002015-02-28T02:40:41.150-08:00Standing on the EdgeI leave Fiji lamenting and rejoicing in almost equal measure. So excited to get back to my own house, with my garden, old friends, family, pubs, walks, castles and cold delicious water straight from the tap. So sad to leave my wonderful colleagues, our great friends, relaxed social life and the coral reefs. However, I will not miss the grapefruit-sized toads that I occasionally find sitting in the cats’ food bowl. Every time I catch one to take it outside - a quivering, wriggling mass wrapped in a tea towel - I’m reminded of the Indiana Jones Aztec sacrifice scene and imagine myself holding a beating human heart. I’m not going to lie, it is disturbing.<br /><br />Well, my bags are packed, the cats confined to the house (totally oblivious to their impending epic "adventure"), I've returned all the things that I've borrowed (I hope), said goodbye to everyone (including some people more than once) and have got to the point where there is really nothing to do except wander around the house wondering if I've packed the right stuff to keep me going until the shipment arrives in the UK in a couple months.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NrA_oCXzm2I/VPGUqDzS7NI/AAAAAAAAAwk/O_r8NMVLyxk/s1600/IMG_20141231_195121010.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NrA_oCXzm2I/VPGUqDzS7NI/AAAAAAAAAwk/O_r8NMVLyxk/s1600/IMG_20141231_195121010.jpg" height="179" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Poor unsuspecting kitties think that they've found a cozy place to sleep..</span>..</td></tr></tbody></table>The contents of my suitcase are quite bizarre – it does look a bit a like the time I let a four year old pack her own suitcase for a holiday – while adorable, it was hardly appropriate to spend an entire week in a swimming cozzie, a pair of wellies, odd socks, a sequined dress and a tutu. &nbsp;Having said that, each item’s inclusion has some sort of logic to it, supported by an internal narrative as I handle each one.<br /><br />The three bags of Cheese Twisties? Those are for Fiji-homesick daughter, who despite having access to all of the comforts of M&amp;S, Waitrose, etc… longs for the Pacific’s favourite snack. Due to rubbish quality control at the factory, I carefully squeezed each pack to make sure that they were full of plump Twisties. So if anyone saw me fondling packets of snack food at MH, that’s what I was doing. Really.<br /><br />The PedEgg has made the grade because my feet are the unhappiest bit of me about going back to a temperate climate. As a fellow <a href="http://sweeteuropeandreams.blogspot.com/2015/02/a-recap-of-our-first-year-in-fiji.html" target="_blank">Suvan posted recently</a> – wearing flip flops 365 days a year never gets old. My feet weep at the thought of being sentenced to entire months confined to winter boots (even if they look great in them). So I've made a deal with my feet. I will occasionally allow them out of their socks and pamper them.<br /><br />My cooking knives come with me along with my mother’s metal spatula that she got when she got married in 1952 and my favourite garlic press. Anyone that knows me will understand that the inclusion of these items are non-negotiable.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-htn8W6CF6xw/VPGUrsz7uyI/AAAAAAAAAws/awMwbNH6dMM/s1600/IMG_20150228_180611699.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-htn8W6CF6xw/VPGUrsz7uyI/AAAAAAAAAws/awMwbNH6dMM/s1600/IMG_20150228_180611699.jpg" height="230" width="320" /></a></div>Some of the contents of my bag reproach me. Why on earth did I bring precious family documents, some of which over 150 years old to Suva? I was going to dedicate the time when I wasn't gainfully employed scanning and cataloging them all. Of course I was. Instead they sat in a plastic box with paper-bag wrapped packages of cat litter to try to prevent them mouldering in the humidity while I spent my early months here marveling how much time it took to accomplish so little. &nbsp;So now some come back with me in my carry-on while the rest awaits the return sea voyage to the UK.<br /><br />Then of course there are gifts, including Pacific-themed artwork done by a friend which shall have pride of place once it’s framed. A colleague gave me a Fijian flag - she felt it was important that I had a version of the old flag before the revamped version, free of the colonial relic of the Union Jack, is rolled out. I shall hang it up every October 10th (Fiji Day) in my window in rural Northumberland, which will be confusing for the locals but will keep me connected to this wonderful country and the time that we spent here.<br /><br />If you're wondering if I packed any clothes, well, I have so few cold-weather clothes (having been in cold weather for approximately 3 weeks in 2-1/2 years), that I even have room for my fabulous enormous cheeseboard made from part of a wine barrel that I got for Christmas in New Zealand. Now if I can just squeeze in some instant kimchi noodles, my packing will be complete.<br /><br />Ni sa moce Fiji – I am going to miss you.<br /><div><br /></div>MaryBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14910505245295673426noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7606733004457432182.post-73886709284471256102015-02-19T23:00:00.001-08:002015-02-21T11:40:32.188-08:00The End is NighAs my Fijian adventure comes to a close, I feel as though I am seeing many aspect of living in Suva in a new light. Things that I’d taken for granted have suddenly taken on a charm that until now has been hidden from me (probably through a veil of sweat), while other things that aren’t quite so charming have become immensely more bearable. The obsequious man that runs the little restaurant that I frequent near work that I suspect overcharges me on a regular basis? Over the last few days he’s started to feel like my best friend. Want to use your sharp elbows to get in front of me in the queue? Be my guest – soon I’ll be back in Blighty where everyone knows the rules of queuing and people like you would be crushed under an opprobrious avalanche of tutting and shaking heads.<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8nWdxioIQYo/VObXneY3k8I/AAAAAAAAAvs/iEr3ff0Lmnk/s1600/Screenshot_2015-02-20-18-05-32.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8nWdxioIQYo/VObXneY3k8I/AAAAAAAAAvs/iEr3ff0Lmnk/s1600/Screenshot_2015-02-20-18-05-32.png" height="320" width="180" /></a>The taste of <a href="http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g294337-d1051892-Reviews-Maya_Dhaba-Suva_Viti_Levu.html" target="_blank">Maya Dhaba’s</a> crispy garlic naan bread dipped in butter chicken has already joined the pantheon of great taste related memories of my food-obsessed life. But, my God, the weather… What can I say about Suva weather that hasn't been said thousands of times before? After an afternoon of extreme tropic torpor with no electricity and no air movement, during which the cats and I all slept in a slightly comatose state with our eyes half open, I’ll be welcoming the biting cold wind off of the North Sea with open arms. Of course, I’ll be wearing my merino wool jacket and down parka that I bought in New Zealand in anticipation of just such an eventuality.<br /><br />My time in Suva has been incredibly rewarding and I’m immensely grateful to the friends that I’ve made during my time here – the ones that been my Fiji “family”, who have talked me through bad Fiji weeks, rejoiced in mine and my family’s achievements and were available to pop open a bottle of something fizzy to celebrate for no other reason than it was Friday (or Tuesday. Or Monday). It’s amazing how close you can get to people when you’re thrown together for such an intense time. One blogger likens it to “<a href="http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g294337-d1051892-Reviews-Maya_Dhaba-Suva_Viti_Levu.html" target="_blank">dog years</a>” - for every year you've known someone in an expat situation, it’s like knowing them for seven.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hqJ_ACaG66Y/VObcXzA3xFI/AAAAAAAAAv4/_DvtopwNXgg/s1600/IMG_20150130_170616366.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hqJ_ACaG66Y/VObcXzA3xFI/AAAAAAAAAv4/_DvtopwNXgg/s1600/IMG_20150130_170616366.jpg" height="320" width="179" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Too hot to be a cat</td></tr></tbody></table>There are few things that I really, really won’t miss about expat life here. One of my biggest irritations is with some of the expat women of this town. Really, what decade are we in when one of the first questions you get asked at a function is “what does your husband do?” That question belongs in the dustbin of history. Seriously, being a trailing spouse can be lobotomising enough without having to leave the sense of identity that comes with your career, skills and interests at the immigration desk.<br /><br />There is something profoundly sad about knowing that our Suva experience, with its distinct cast of characters, will never exist in time again. It’s all part of the great emotional rollercoaster ride that I’m currently on. I go from premature deep nostalgia for things that I’m going to miss to extreme anticipation for doing recreational things that do not involve alcohol, eating or sweating profusely (or all three things at once). Underlying all of this is a sense of grief at the closure of another life chapter.&nbsp;Though I’m anticipating an exciting next adventure, I’ll certainly be sad to see this one come to an end.MaryBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14910505245295673426noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7606733004457432182.post-38767496147635194982015-01-16T19:28:00.001-08:002015-01-16T19:31:44.516-08:00Nine out of Ten Cats<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CX9LvghifD4/VLnVdtMxlPI/AAAAAAAAAus/4nnGO4CSm48/s1600/Laila.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CX9LvghifD4/VLnVdtMxlPI/AAAAAAAAAus/4nnGO4CSm48/s1600/Laila.jpg" height="360" width="640" /></a></div>Meet Miss Laila. She’s a cat. While our other cats are aloof and slightly skittish, she’ll sit on anyone’s lap, particularly if it is already occupied by a laptop. &nbsp;Out of the ten cats that we've rescued while we've been here, she’s the friendliest.<br /><br />“You've rescued ten cats!” I hear you cry through cyberspace (believe me, I've heard it enough in person). Now take the next thought that is about to pop into your brain and strangle it before it fully forms. These poor homeless pusses were not the product of feckless locals not looking after their pets properly. No, nine out of ten of these cats were the result of the behaviour of someone that in expat parlance is cleverly referred to as a “bad expat”.<br /><br />Though it needs in-depth anthropological study, I suspect that bad expat behaviour is not linked to people being inherently malevolent (in other words, just being a bad person), but rather an inexplicable lapse of normal behaviour when transplanted to a new environment free from the conventions of home (“Seatbelt? No, in Fiji I've acquired super-human strength that allows me to survive being flung though the windscreen at high speed!”). I've got quite a bit to say about bad expats, but this isn't the right time or place to have that uncensored discussion, so I’ll continue to mutter under my breath about them, quietly taking notes.<br /><br />Now, back to cats. The road to becoming a certified crazy cat lady began soon after we moved to Fiji when we started to feed a pregnant female cat (Momma Kitty aka Goldie aka Cat 1) who had been abandoned by her expat owner when he and his family moved out of the neighbourhood. Soon she produced two tiny kittens (Daenerys Stormborn Targaryen aka Khaleesi aka Cat 2 and Regulus Arcturus Black aka Reggie aka Cat 3) in the stack of packing boxes outside our back door.<br /><br />I can honestly say that without the appearance of those three wonderful whiskered balls of fluff, our time in Fiji might have been dramatically curtailed. Do not underestimate the power of pets to give you a sense of home when, standing at the bottom of a sweaty black pit of despair, you begin to question the wisdom of moving so far away from family, friends and Marks &amp; Spencers.<br /><br />When another expat family abandoned a pregnant Miss Laila (Cat 4) and her adolescent feral male offspring, Ollie (Cat 5), she moved straight in with us (we’re suckers and they know it) and quickly produced Cats 6-9. Did I mention that Miss Laila’s mother was Mamma Kitty (Cat 1)? So you can see that because some feeble expat couldn’t be asked to cough up the FJ$50 (approximately US$25) to get Goldie desexed in the first place, she turned into a Mama Kitty and was responsible for at least eight cats which were totally surplus to requirement.<br /><br />Almost all of the cats have been rehomed, but we are looking for a new set of humans to look after Miss Laila. Ollie is still feral. We hadn’t seen him for nearly six months when I came downstairs one morning last week and found him asleep in the fruit bowl (obviously). He chowed down a couple bowls of kibble, asked for a scratch under the chin then headed off into the undergrowth without looking back.<br /><br />And cat number ten? Poor little Teddy was found in a carpark in the middle of Suva by one of Anna’s friends aged two weeks. We hand fed him and raised him until, when he was four months old, a houseguest accidentally let him outside and he was killed by a pack of feral dogs. Seriously, don’t get me started on irresponsible dog owners – I wouldn’t be able to shut up.<br /><div><br /></div>MaryBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14910505245295673426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7606733004457432182.post-28548978886663850322014-11-22T22:19:00.000-08:002014-11-24T21:47:19.461-08:00Things that go bump in the nightI had been thinking that a post about creepy crawlies in Fiji was long overdue when the inspiration arrived on my doorstep. My bedroom doorstep. Literally. At 3am.<br /><br />Now all of you cat owners know about the lovely treats that your cute little killers bring you as gifts. Terrified mice, rats in<i> rigor mortis, </i>tailless chewed up lizards, half-dead birds and the like. All delightful and totally within my capacity to deal with. But the other night I met my match. I’ll admit there was some screaming and maybe just a little hysteria.<br /><br />We have a long wooden landing at the top of the stairs outside of our bedroom. The cats use this as their killing ground. In the night you can sometimes hear them playing some sort of morbid version of catch. It sounds something like: scamper, scamper, thud, scamper, thud, thud. If any of the scampers or thuds is punctuated by a squeak, I’ll rouse myself from my slumber to undertake a mission of mercy to try to save the still living victim.<br /><br />The other night there were quite a lot of thuds and scampers. Eventually there was a loud squeak, so I got out of bed and went onto the landing. A pile of clean laundry had been knocked over and one of the murderous beasts, Reggie, was looking expectantly at a crumpled up dark shirt, presumably the hiding place of a wee cute mouse that had managed to escape his clutches. In the dark, I stepped over the cat and the t-shirt to pick up daughter’s school uniform to hang it back up when the cat and the shirt suddenly engaged in mortal combat. The shirt wasn't a shirt. It was a fruit bat.<br /><br />Now, I usually find fruit bats quite charming. They are wonderful to see flying overhead in the beautiful Fijian dusk – in silhouette they look just like Batman’s mark. However, they do get on your nerves when they screech and fight during the night. So there I was, penned in between blissfully slumbering daughter’s bedroom door and a flapping injured bat.<br /><br />The cat, at least, had retreated a little. I grabbed daughter’s school shirt and was about to throw it over the injured beast when suddenly the fabric, in both substance and size, appeared to be inadequate for the task. Also the day was dawning on her second to last day of school (ever) and an important chemistry exam. I didn't want to be responsible for ruining a lucky shirt, or cause the entire family to become infected by a Fijian version of Ebola, so I turned to the only other option available to me. I screamed for my husband.<br /><br />Husband, who had just hours before been complaining about our felines’ blood-thirsty ways (when dealing with a dead baby bird), gallantly appeared with a blanket. He gently picked up the poor little critter and took it outside. When he got back into bed later (after washing with copious amounts of warm soapy water – we've got a very good understanding of microbiology in our family) he said, “Poor little thing. It probably won’t live. Damned thing bit me three or four times – nearly took my finger off”. He then started making zombie noises. Funny.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ccHEkUIDTIc/VHFzngmMmHI/AAAAAAAAAsg/3_CbQ-tHhTc/s1600/DSCN0948%2B(2).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ccHEkUIDTIc/VHFzngmMmHI/AAAAAAAAAsg/3_CbQ-tHhTc/s1600/DSCN0948%2B(2).JPG" height="227" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Reggie as a kitten killing a catnip mouse</span></td></tr></tbody></table>One of the great things about Fiji is its lack of deadly creepy crawlies. The Fijians think our fear of spiders is incomprehensible as none of the spiders here bite. There are snakes – both on land and sea. But the land based ones are mostly small and rare, while the banded sea krait is venomous but has a tiny mouth. Imagine yourself trying to take a bite out of a basketball - that’s what I imagine the degree of difficulty one of these striped critters would have trying to deliver a mortal wound to a person. Of course this is hard to remember when one is swimming up from the reef at you when you’re snorkeling – there is something particularly unnerving about snakes moving in three dimensions.<br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VJQdP9fgKd4/VHF6I_qn1qI/AAAAAAAAAsw/H2XRTBj0cfE/s1600/SReef%2B(140).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VJQdP9fgKd4/VHF6I_qn1qI/AAAAAAAAAsw/H2XRTBj0cfE/s1600/SReef%2B(140).JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Scary if you're scared of snakes, I guess.</span></td></tr></tbody></table>Poor daughter appears to be the one with the most frequent creepy crawly encounters. Soon after we arrived in Suva, she slayed a scorpion with a wooden spatula in the kitchen. Or at least she thought it was a scorpion. The fact that it turned out to be a harmless scorpion spider shouldn't detract from her heroic effort. Then there was the enormous Pacific tree boa in the branches above their heads during a biology field trip. This being Fiji, one of Anna’s classmate’s scrambled up the tree to get it down.<br /><br />However, her worst encounter by far was with a spider. Now I know that I just said that spiders don’t bite here. However, when there is one the size of a dinner plate hiding in your untidy bedroom all rational thinking goes out of the window. She was saved by her friend, S, who stood like a Ninja for around 45 minutes on her bed patiently surveying the room for the elusive beast. Assisted by another friend, H, the beast was eventually caught. The fact that H has a propensity to eat all of my pickled jalapenos when he’s in the house was forever forgiven. John and I witnessed these unfolding events via inadvertent text messages as demonstrated by the phone screenshot below.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-42g9wYOUYLk/VHFrD9150EI/AAAAAAAAAsQ/O7FegjLrguI/s1600/Spider%2Bscreenshot%2Bcensored.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-42g9wYOUYLk/VHFrD9150EI/AAAAAAAAAsQ/O7FegjLrguI/s1600/Spider%2Bscreenshot%2Bcensored.png" height="320" width="236" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Pity about the swearing but at least she demonstrates her vast literary knowledge</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>As for me, the worst that I've encountered is a venomous centipede that ran out of some lettuce into the salad spinner, where it was trapped and duly dispatched by one of Anna’s friends. I’m not going to lie – I absolutely loath the things. I hate all their horrible little legs and the creepy undulating way that they move. Not to the mention that a bite from them has been likened to the pain of childbirth. They are definitely my least favourite of all tropical critters along with crocodiles. Fortunately we don’t have those here.<br /><br />Of course, all of this needs to be put into perspective. Even if you do the Beqa shark dive or happen to encounter a reef shark while snorkeling, it’s very likely that the most dangerous thing that you’ll experience in Fiji will be a ride in a taxi with no seatbelts and a driver in desperate need of a pair of spectacles. Unless you're smallish and furry, in which case I'd suggest that you stay away from our cats.<br /><br />MaryBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14910505245295673426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7606733004457432182.post-17049764789213883292014-10-31T23:01:00.000-07:002014-10-31T23:03:38.223-07:00Terra Incognita disambiguatedWell here we are at the end of October, post-visitors, post-election and we’re still standing, though speeding towards 2015 at a rate that appears to defy the laws of space-time. So far, it’s been a terrific year, made glorious by its general uneventfulness. As one gets older, events (defined here as things that happen to you) tend to become increasingly more likely to be of the negative variety, so one can revel in any prolonged length of time where such things are absent.<br /><br />As usual, we prepared for the worst and hoped for the best. We treated the approaching election (the first since a military coup in 2006) a bit like a strengthening tropical depression. We bought a couple of cases of drinking water, stocked up on gin, tonic, chocolate and cat food and kept a weather eye on the media. We dedicated a bit of time to pondering the implications of newspaper headlines like “Suva will not burn! Says PM” and the inevitable racist and misogynistic vitriol that surfaced occasionally on social media.<br /><br />It was heartening to see the people of Fiji take their democratic duty to heart. The day came (it was declared a much-needed public holiday) and, besides a cracking combined neighbourhood birthday and election party, it was uneventful. The Fijian electorate (now all sporting fingers dyed deep purple) elected the sitting government who now are the majority party in a resurrected parliament. One is full of hope for this nascent democracy – it’s hard to imagine that, if things stay on track, the country will not be a completely different (and better) place in ten years’ time.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8eV0LMrTNVU/VFRtnIhTbnI/AAAAAAAAAqo/g-U7xHYIpYo/s1600/Beqa%2Bsunset.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8eV0LMrTNVU/VFRtnIhTbnI/AAAAAAAAAqo/g-U7xHYIpYo/s1600/Beqa%2Bsunset.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div><br />In the run up to the election, we had a series of overlapping visitors which gave us a great excuse to revisit some resorts close to Suva and try out some new ones. I will now describe them in 60 seconds without hesitation, repetition or deviation:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.leleuvia.com/" target="_blank">Leleuvia Island Resort</a>. An old favourite – small island with lovely sandy beach. Has changed target market from backpackers to families in the time we've been in Fiji.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6MPX76jaPoI/VFRv9PGqwqI/AAAAAAAAAq0/0g53673MgVM/s1600/Leleuvia.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6MPX76jaPoI/VFRv9PGqwqI/AAAAAAAAAq0/0g53673MgVM/s1600/Leleuvia.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Reef off of Leleuvia. You have to look carefully to spot these little guys (nudibranchs).</span></td></tr></tbody></table><b>Upside:</b> Fantastic snorkeling if you know where to go, paddleboards, lovely bar, friendly staff and relatively easy to get to from Suva. On Saturday nights they serve the best lovo in Fiji.<br /><br /><b>Downside:</b> Can be unpleasantly hot at night once ceiling fans go off. I’m going off having to put up with communal toilets and showers (though now some of the showers have hot water). There are probably too many children if you’re looking for a quiet holiday – particularly over long weekends when expats descend on the place with their families. Besides breakfast (which is wonderful), there’s no real choice at mealtimes.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.beqalagoonresort.com/" target="_blank">Beqa Lagoon Resort</a>. This is a new favourite for weekend getaways. It’s mainly a dive resort but it caters to non-divers too.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-29q2H1cBaJE/VFRqom38XMI/AAAAAAAAAqU/yRWGGgxOM8A/s1600/Beqa%2Bhouse%2Breef.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-29q2H1cBaJE/VFRqom38XMI/AAAAAAAAAqU/yRWGGgxOM8A/s1600/Beqa%2Bhouse%2Breef.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Beqa House reef. Who knew that worms could be so beautiful?</span></td></tr></tbody></table><b>Upsides:</b> Easy to get to – it’s a 25 minute boat ride from Pacific Harbour. The en-suite bures are lovely with 24 hour power, which means that you can have cool, mosquito-free nights. The house reef is impressive with good coral cover and loads to see – white tips, scorpion fish, octopus, lion fish were all there just off the beach. The free poolside foot massage with Pure Fiji products was a clincher.<br /><br /><b>Downside:</b> Bearing in mind that Fiji is currently under drought conditions, the pool needs a serious clean and they need to figure out some way to aerate the koi pond.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.wellesleyresort.com.fj/" target="_blank">Wellesley Resort</a>. This was briefly my new favourite before we went to Beqa.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-djwRQNSELvE/VFR1JHUEMXI/AAAAAAAAArM/EWvE5LVUR5U/s1600/Wellesley.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-djwRQNSELvE/VFR1JHUEMXI/AAAAAAAAArM/EWvE5LVUR5U/s1600/Wellesley.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Giant clam on the reef off of Wellesley. I never get tired of seeing these things.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><b>Upside:</b> As it’s on the Coral Coast, you don’t have to catch a boat to get there. This means that anyone in your party that can’t guarantee that they can get away early on a Friday doesn't have to wait until Saturday morning to join you. The accommodation is very comfortable (with air conditioning). A little bar opens on the beach for happy hour. The grounds are beautifully landscaped.<br /><br /><b>Downside: </b>The way the grounds are laid out, you can be quite a way from the beach. The Coral Coast is often unpleasantly windy. This was the case when we were there. However, the pool was protected from the wind and was lovely to hang out next to.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.naiganiresort.com/" target="_blank">Naigani Island Resort </a>(Tau Resort). Imagine if a Fijian resort was run by Basil Fawlty. As I write this post, I am sitting on this lovely island wondering how to adequately describe it. Quirky might be the right word, but the magnitude of quirkiness really is too great not to be completely exasperating.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EHqXBECt0WU/VFRzLKUk9xI/AAAAAAAAArA/2KnoBuTxwGg/s1600/Naigani%2Breef.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EHqXBECt0WU/VFRzLKUk9xI/AAAAAAAAArA/2KnoBuTxwGg/s1600/Naigani%2Breef.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Naigani Island. Water quality wasn't great that day, but the coral cover was.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><b>Upside: </b>Naigani is a beautiful island with stunning reefs and great kayaking. The accommodation is spacious – more like houses than bures with ensuite loos and hot showers. There is a nice pool (with a little water slide), a little golf course and a covered area near the pool (which is currently being refurbished) for hanging out in out of the sun/rain.<br /><br /><b>Downside:</b> The management. We received confusing instructions about where to catch the boat (currently <a href="https://www.blogger.com/"><span id="goog_1346438373"></span>QVS </a>beach while Natovi Jetty is refurbished) but still arrived in time to catch it. The boat was not there. The fishermen at the beach didn't know what we were talking about. We rang all the available numbers for the resort and no one picked up. We emailed. No one replied. After 50 minutes (and 15 more phone calls, none of which were answered) the boat finally showed up. We had to wade through seriously filthy water that smelled of sewage to get to the boat.<br /><br />The management seemed surprised that a couple that was supposed to be on the same boat as us hadn't shown up. I, on the other hand, am surprised that anyone actually ever makes it here.<br /><br />Then the same thing happened to my other half when he tried to get over the next day. This is not “Fiji Time”- it’s downright rudeness.<br /><br />On arrival at the resort, we were assured that we don’t need to lock our accommodation as it’s so safe here. However, when the manager went off island for five hours during the afternoon, he locked up the bar and took the key. This dry spell coincided with the generator being off, so not only couldn't we get a soft drink or a beer, we couldn't even boil the kettle to make a cup of tea (and I’m here with three English people so this is a calamity). Thank goodness we’d had the presence of mind to pack for all eventualities (plan for the worst, hope for the best again) and we’d brought over emergency alcohol supplies.<br /><br />There are a lot of pluses to this place, but I’m not going to be coming back in a hurry.<br /><br />No matter where you go here, if you have a food allergy, you have to be absolutely sure that all of the relevant staff knows about your allergy. At each one of the resorts above (with the exception of the Wellesley), I have been served eggplant despite telling the staff that I’m allergic to it. At one resort, when I pointed out that there was eggplant in the pasta dish I’d been served even though the waitress had assured me that there wasn't when she put it down in front of me, I was told “You asked if there was eggplant in the pasta. There isn't. It’s in the sauce”. Silly me. God help you if you have an allergy to something that isn't large and purple with distinctive texture and seeds that can be spotted a mile off.<br /><br />I’m sometimes surprised by the Tripadvisor ratings given to some of the resorts here. I suspect the ratings actually measure how much fun people had on their vacation rather than giving a reliable measure of the resort and its facilities. But really, isn't that the point?<br /><br /><br /><i>As usual - all photo credits to my talented other half...</i><br /><div><br /></div>MaryBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14910505245295673426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7606733004457432182.post-24345290181489866802014-07-28T11:27:00.001-07:002014-07-28T15:45:59.099-07:00Random musingsMy other half arrived in Suva around six months before Anna and I joined him. During our frequent Skype conversations I used to ask what it was like living in Suva to which there would be some mental and verbal cogitating before an unsatisfactory “I’m not really sure” or similar would be uttered. I’m not going to pretend that I wasn’t frustrated at the time by the lack of a one word answer - “awesome” or “amazing” or even “meh” would have been preferable. However, now that I’m asked that pretty frequently by people contacting me through the blog I understand his inability to answer this question precisely.<br /><br />I heard Suva described as a ‘Melanesian New York’ in a song recently. &nbsp;That might sound like a bit of a stretch, but relative to the rest of the South Pacific, it is a megatropolis. And like all ‘big’ cities, it can be frustrating. It can be delightful. But the fascinating thing is how quickly what at first appears strange and exotic becomes ordinary and routine. I can go for days now without even remembering that I’m in a country that’s not my own. Of course, this could be because I haven’t lived in my own country for well over two decades. Or it might be a sign that I’m getting into a rut. But the most likely explanation is that I’m just a little dense.<br /><br />However, there are a couple of thing that I cannot get used to – things I don’t want to get used to. Things that are like a slap in the face with a wet walu when I encounter them. Like the way animals are treated here. And I’m not just talking about the locals. We’ve rescued ten cats while we lived here and that doesn’t include the one that sneaks into the house occasionally to steal kibble. Nine of these cats descend from just one unspayed female owned by an expat who, when he left the neighbourhood, took his two male cats with him, leaving poor pregnant Goldie behind. &nbsp;Some of her offspring were already roaming the neighbourhood by the time we inherited her, including a lovely female who had been adopted by another expat family in the neighbourhood – and left behind unspayed and pregnant when they moved as well.<br /><br />Seriously – what is wrong with you people? Granted the <a href="http://www.fijispca.com/" target="_blank">SPCA </a>doesn’t always have a vet in house, but they usually do – and&nbsp;<a href="http://www.fijispca.com/services.html" target="_blank">spaying and neutering are not expensive</a>. And don’t get me started on dog owners. When we lived in the Caribbean, there were canines charmingly known as ‘dumpster dogs’. These were generally a docile group what all sort of looked like…well, like “dog”. Black and brown and medium-sized these animals had obviously been self-perpetuating until they reverted to a canine variety that I imagine the original pooch looked like around a Neanderthal’s campfire. The packs of feral dogs roaming around Suva, on the other hand, look like a motley group of mutts of all different types, some of which are obviously abandoned pets. &nbsp;And occasionally you come across a dog that you think is dead or at least should be dead – eyes infected, covered in mange and festering wounds. For these dogs I usually carry around a tin of meat with a pull-top lid. However, reflecting the futility of this, I now think that I should carry around a lethal injection instead.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IiH1m1cjqEE/U9aSqz7np1I/AAAAAAAAAnw/cromBria3tY/s1600/IMG_20140514_235009046.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IiH1m1cjqEE/U9aSqz7np1I/AAAAAAAAAnw/cromBria3tY/s1600/IMG_20140514_235009046.jpg" height="179" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Life is a lot less stressful if you're not having constant litters of kittens.</td></tr></tbody></table>Another source of irritation is the term ‘housegirl’ used by many people here, including those that are employed at vast expense by UN-type agencies to address issues such as women’s equality. Now I’m old enough to remember the 1970s, a time when as one writer put it, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tabby-biddle/women-vs-girl_b_415745.html" target="_blank">‘calling a woman a girl was like spitting in her face’</a>. I am not a rabid feminist, but language is a powerful thing. To call a grown woman a girl in relation to her employment is to infer that she is not capable of being responsible for herself or others. That ultimately, she is a child. When a western expatriate in a developing country uses the term ‘housegirl’ to describe someone in their employment, it’s not only inappropriate, it’s inexcusable.<br /><br />Recently we’ve come out of the other side of a dengue fever epidemic. Dengue is one of those <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/globalhealth/ntd/" target="_blank">neglected tropical diseases</a> that are neglected because they only affect one billion or so people or so. Did I mention that they are the one billion poorest people on the planet? Dengue is a mosquito-borne virus that leads to a flu-like illness that can become haemorrhagic and lethal. It’s a scary illness with no real effective treatment or vaccination. The advice from healthcare professionals was alarming – take Panadol and drink plenty of fluids and go to the hospital if you start bleeding out of any of your orifices (including your pores).<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.gatesnotes.com/~/media/Images/Articles/Health/Most-Lethal-Animal-Mosquito-Week/BiggestKillers_final_v8_no-logo.ashx" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.gatesnotes.com/~/media/Images/Articles/Health/Most-Lethal-Animal-Mosquito-Week/BiggestKillers_final_v8_no-logo.ashx" height="320" width="213" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Save your paranoia for mosquitoes, not sharks.</td></tr></tbody></table>John and I have both had it after Hurricane Hugo in St Croix in the USVI when the mosquito population boomed in all of the post-storm standing water. The problem with dengue is that there are several serotypes and while you may gain immunity to one serotype, you can become more susceptible to serious complication if you contract the other types. Not knowing which serotype we had made me ultra-paranoid. Not to mention that I didn’t want to have to check anyone’s orifices if they got ill (including my own). I had aerosol and roll-on versions of DEET everywhere – in my handbag, at work, in the car. I gave out cans of Aerogard to visitors, told tourists at resort to spray themselves and sent Anna into school with multiple cans to leave in the common room. While others were complaining about how horrible the mass spraying in our neighbourhood to kill mosquito larvae was, I was transported to my happy suburban childhood by the smell of malathion which my dad used to spray liberally on the roses and we Californians were subjected to via aerial spraying to control the Mediterranean fruit fly in the early 1980s. Hmmmm organophosphates – the smell of summer!<br /><br />When I’m not getting worked up about women and animal rights or the priorities of big pharmaceutical companies, I do occasionally get out and enjoy myself. Recently a friend and I went to the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/FJFWSuluSalwaar" target="_blank">Crest Chicken Sulu Jamba Competition</a>. We were the only <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaivalagi" target="_blank">kaivalagi </a>there except one of the judges, which was a shame as it was a great afternoon out. It was serious but the mood was light-hearted with amazing designs of the traditional shirt/skirt combination modelled by women of all shapes and sizes. There was also entertainment, quizzes with prizes (mostly frozen chickens) and free ice cream. It was one of those quirky things that keeps living in this city interesting.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UuI9W58e458/U9aUW144SFI/AAAAAAAAAn8/DlX6gr_Z6ow/s1600/IMG_20140628_155628457_HDR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UuI9W58e458/U9aUW144SFI/AAAAAAAAAn8/DlX6gr_Z6ow/s1600/IMG_20140628_155628457_HDR.jpg" height="320" width="205" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rusila showing off her amazing sulu jamba skills</td></tr></tbody></table>We are experiencing a well-recognised phenomenon where no one visits you for a long period of time then you get numerous sets of visitors– some overlapping - over a couple of months. Not that I’m complaining. Our first visitor was a niece who had been volunteering with <a href="http://www.gviusa.com/volunteer-in-fiji/" target="_blank">GVI </a>(and loved it) and spent her last couple of days in Fiji with us in Suva. We played tourist, finally going to the <a href="http://www.fijimuseum.org.fj/" target="_blank">Fiji Museum</a> (I had been saving that for a very rainy day). But most spectacular of all, we went up to <a href="http://www.fiji.travel/accommodation/takalana-bay-retreat" target="_blank">Takalana </a>for the day. It’s pretty much exactly a two-hour drive from Suva (if you drive like a Fijian taxi driver, probably a bit longer for the rest of us). The weather was rubbish, but the black sand beach was stunning. After a short bumpy boat-ride we were at Moon Reef enjoying the company of its resident pod of spinner dolphin. Because they are protected, you cannot get into the water with them, but they are totally engaging anyway. Back at the resort, they served us a decent lunch. It was a wonderful day and I’m just sorry that we hadn't done it before.<br /><br />And with all of these visitors, we’ll be able to tick a few more things to do off of our Fiji list. We’ll let you know how it goes.<br /><div><br /></div>MaryBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14910505245295673426noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7606733004457432182.post-54725149042877509992014-05-16T00:17:00.000-07:002014-05-16T13:41:49.755-07:00Suva – A Beginner’s GuideSuva, our home for the last couple of years, was obviously chosen as the capital of Fiji because of its naturally deep harbour rather than its white sandy beaches (of which there are none) or beautiful weather (it’s in a notorious rain shadow). This lack of stereotypical tropical accouterments sometimes has us scratching our incredibly sweaty brow and asking ourselves “What the hell are we doing here?” Generally this pondering peters out inconclusively after a large gin and tonic (or two).<br /><br />You can usually pick out the newly arrived expats by their pale skin, numerous bright red mosquito bites and slightly alarmed, confused looks. Here are a few of the things that I have learned since I was in that vulnerable state what seems like such a long time ago.<br /><br />1. Fiji is far away from (almost) everywhere.<br /><br />The first clue about how far away Fiji was from anywhere should have been when someone pointed out that Fiji appeared on the edges of both sides of the map hanging up in our UK dining room – literally at the end of the world, twice over.<br /><br />Our second clue was that it took five days to travel from our little village in the North East of England to Fiji due to multiple Pacific typhoons. There can’t be many families that can say that the only time they were in New Zealand was for a day trip.<br /><br />People that come to visit us from the UK have to be very committed considering the expense of the tickets and the fact that travel time is around 30 hours each way. That’s a lot of your vacation time spent sitting on airplanes and in airports before you've even got anywhere. Mind you, when you arrive, it’s pretty awesome.<br /><br />The exception to the faraway rule is for New Zealand and Australia, which explains the plethora of Kiwi and Aussie expats here.<br /><br />2. It’s hot in Fiji.<br /><br />One of my abiding memories of living in the Caribbean was the total change of atmosphere when the plane doors opened on arrival from northern climes. Arriving at Nausori Airport, in our damp little corner of Fiji, the sensation is more like entering a steamy sauna than opening a West Indian oven door.<br /><br />I've had to get over my sweat phobia and my eco-reluctance to put on the air conditioning to survive here. The great thing is that the humidity and rain is often localised to Suva which means that you can get on a boat or a taxi and escape to typical tropical paradise without too much effort.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZhTf7MzdKvs/U3Wykiifx1I/AAAAAAAAAkY/6FVpCbSpV70/s1600/P9290021.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZhTf7MzdKvs/U3Wykiifx1I/AAAAAAAAAkY/6FVpCbSpV70/s1600/P9290021.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Too hot? Stick your face in the water! (Full disclosure - this photo was taken in the Yasawas)</div><br />Just existing in this heat can be exhausting. There’s a term used locally by expats – tropical torpor – which describes a state of inertia that one occasionally sinks into here. Any effort to be productive is scuppered by the sensation that you’re wearing a lead-lined suit and existing in an atmosphere made up of mostly molasses. The best cure for tropical torpor is to turn the air con or ceiling fan on high and spend a weekend on the sofa napping and watching an entire series of Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad or similar which you bought from the local DVD shop for FJ$5.00.<br /><br />3. It is 99% certain you will not get a job as a trailing spouse in Fiji.<br /><br />I’d never heard the term trailing spouse until we started our preparations for moving to Fiji. Everything about it is ugly, from being defined by your relationship, to the implication that you’re trotting along (or being dragged) behind your partner as they engage in worthy employment.<br /><br />Immigration laws here mean that getting a job once you've arrived with your employed spouse will be next to impossible. Volunteering opportunities are also extremely limited due to the same visa restrictions. Having said that, there are plenty of people in the same boat so friend groups form quickly and the days become inexplicably busy. <br /><br />This can be a real eye-opener if, like me, you get to the end of your first six months here and you realise that you haven’t even started the great American novel that you told yourself you would write if ever freed from the shackles of gainful employment. Some people do end up getting jobs (I did eventually) but it is the rare exception rather than the rule.<br /><br />4. The more I know about Fiji, the more complicated it becomes.<br /><br />Fiji has had a number of coups over the last couple of decades and is currently being run by the military dictatorship that engineered the last one in 2006. Having said that, this isn’t a country of scary armed men and civil unrest. In fact, I feel as safe here as anywhere else I have ever lived. The complexities are subtle - so subtle that until now one could completely ignore them if you wanted to. Elections have been called for September 2014 and while we’re all excited to be in the privileged position to witness the birth of a new democracy, I won’t pretend that it’s not without a bit of trepidation that we’re watching events unfold from front row seats.<br /><br />5. You can get pretty much everything you need in Suva.<br /><br />Every few months some poor unsuspecting impending arrival to Suva will post a question about what to bring to Fiji with them in their shipment on the Suva Expat Facebook page. Suva newbies will implore them to bring a lifetime supply of stock cubes, garbage bags and bath mats. This in turn elicits a torrent of responses from old-timers and locals telling everyone to get a grip. The good news (for Americans) is that you can get Skippy peanut butter (Cost u Less) and green enchilada sauce (New World). You can even now get a decent baguette from the Hot Bread Kitchen at Damodar City.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iplRCcU_3JY/U3W0WiikbOI/AAAAAAAAAks/4jKUfia-KXY/s1600/DSCN0587.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iplRCcU_3JY/U3W0WiikbOI/AAAAAAAAAks/4jKUfia-KXY/s1600/DSCN0587.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Beats Waitrose hands down.</span></td></tr></tbody></table>If you want lashings of gorgonzola and Parma ham, you’re moving to the wrong country. If you want shimmering lumps of sashimi-grade tuna and heaps of beautiful fresh fruit and vegetables that are reasonably priced then you’re coming to the right place. Mind you, I'm considering adopting a public display of mourning now that avocado season is over.<br /><br />There are hardware stores, banks, chemists (pharmacies), schools, three universities, public pools, film festivals, good and cheap public transport, outdoor pursuit clubs, cooking classes, language classes... It’s all there – you just need to know where to look.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZYoZOYAKKkM/U3Wq-KUC-uI/AAAAAAAAAkM/6VqEoo3ZODg/s1600/DSCN0554.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZYoZOYAKKkM/U3Wq-KUC-uI/AAAAAAAAAkM/6VqEoo3ZODg/s1600/DSCN0554.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">The USP campus is pretty darned attractive.</span></td></tr></tbody></table>6. You can be happy in Suva.<br /><br />Despite anything negative I've said in this post, I would never discourage anyone from moving to Suva. Living here has had it challenges, and while we've been forced outside of our comfort limits once or twice (or a hundred times), our time here has been rewarding and exciting.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Wj3aOQ7GWVs/U3Wzjo4SvnI/AAAAAAAAAkk/jHoUSko-qbQ/s1600/IMG_20140516_074822032_HDR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Wj3aOQ7GWVs/U3Wzjo4SvnI/AAAAAAAAAkk/jHoUSko-qbQ/s1600/IMG_20140516_074822032_HDR.jpg" height="179" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">My Suva Picnic Park - my new favourite place to loiter.</span></td></tr></tbody></table>Suva itself is undergoing a transformation – the waterfront part that stretches from Suva Point towards the city centre around the peninsula, My Suva Picnic Park, is a wonderful place to walk and people watch. We've witnessed the resurrection of the Grand Pacific Hotel and anticipate having high tea in grand style when it opens. We’re also getting a Mexican restaurant in the brand new Damodar City complex, which also has a food court, a cinema (the second multiplex in town) and lots of other useful shops. This is an event of intense culinary interest in a city with no Italian, Thai or Vietnamese restaurants.<br /><br />But it’s the people that make the place. Everyone in Suva has a story to tell – the Fijians and the expats. If you put yourself in the position to listen to them you will find some of the most fascinating people on the planet. Some of them will turn into good friends, others will be passing acquaintances, but each encounter will leave you a little richer than you were before.<br /><br />Occasionally when I walking down the mean streets of Suva, I get a similar discombobulating sensation to when I’m flying. But instead of “OMG, I’m in a small metal tube, 51000 feet above the ground with no visible means of support!” it’s more like “Am I really existing on a small speck of land in the middle of the Pacific? How weird, because it feels strangely like home.”<br /><div><br /></div>MaryBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14910505245295673426noreply@blogger.com35tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7606733004457432182.post-85887597093009756592014-02-14T23:49:00.000-08:002014-02-14T23:50:37.959-08:00Lunch LessonsWhen I was a teenager and a frequenter of dining establishments open in the wee hours of the morning, there was a chalkboard in the local Denny’s foyer which stated “You only get three meals a day. Don’t waste them”. I have often pondered this bit of culinary wisdom when contemplating my vacillating waistline and America’s growing obesity problem.<br /><br />I would rather make a bit of an effort to make myself something delicious for breakfast rather than resorting to toast, which I consider a sad excuse for a meal (unless it’s whole-wheat toast with Hellman’s mayo, avocado and chopped red onion &nbsp;or similar). For lunch on work days, I usually dine “al desco”, but at least take the time to savour whatever I've made the effort to pack for myself.<br /><br />When I started my job in Suva, I religiously took my lunch every day. The first day that I left it on the kitchen counter at home, I was stuck. Where would I get my lunch that wasn't too expensive? There’s not an M&amp;S, Waitrose or even Starbucks in sight. The little restaurants dotted around the area of Toorak where I work looked too scary to enter, let alone eat anything out of. That day, I spent my entire lunch hour walking down to Dolphin Food Court to get sushi from the Daikoku. It really is the best take-out sushi I've ever eaten, but it’s a long way to walk and the entire way back is uphill.<br /><br />The next time I forgot my lunch, I decided to brave one of the local Chinese eateries. I watched the person in front of me in the queue being served an enormous pile of food. When the server turned to me, I asked him to give me a small amount of rice and chicken. He plopped a paddle-full of rice that would have served at least two people into a Styrofoam container. He looked surprised when I stopped him serving me another pile of equal size. He covered the rice in a generous serving of chicken stir-fry and again seemed puzzled when I told him that was all that I wanted. “You want pork?” he asked holding up another ladle full of food. I said no and turned to the register to pay, glancing back, I saw the guy ladling more food into my takeout container. When I asked him what he was doing (politely) he said that obviously I didn't want pork, so I must want lamb.<br /><br />As I sweatily trudged up the hill back to work with 1.5kg of lunch in a thin plastic bag every bad restaurant-related environmental health story ran through my head until I felt like I was carrying a throbbing bio-bomb. Then something happened that has never happened to me before and hasn't happened to me since – a destitute young man asked me if he could have my lunch. &nbsp;I was as grateful to give it to him as he was to receive it. To be honest, I pretty much tossed it to him like it was a live grenade.<br /><br />Fast-forward a couple of months and now I hardly ever take my lunch to work. This is because I have been shown the amazing secrets of Indian fast food. Sometimes I get Indian snacks late morning from the friendly staff at Khana Kazana on Toorak Road. If you haven’t had an idli (a steamed bready thing that looks like a flying saucer that’s been stuffed with a fresh chutney of grated fresh coconut, dhania (cilantro/fresh coriander) and chopped chilli, you should make it a culinary mission. They also make a fried spinach fritter things which are amazing as are their gulgula (little donuts). And it’s so inexpensive that it’s not even worth contemplating making them at home.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_HEeyrs8rIQ/Uv8WXa9TGbI/AAAAAAAAAhs/m4lU5s6pGgo/s1600/DSCN3187.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_HEeyrs8rIQ/Uv8WXa9TGbI/AAAAAAAAAhs/m4lU5s6pGgo/s1600/DSCN3187.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">&nbsp;You have to get here after 9am and before lunch if you want to bag an idli.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="text-align: center;">If I want a proper lunch, I walk down to the Curry House. You have to cross the most dangerous intersection for paedestrians in Suva (the corner of Renwick St and Raojibhai Patel Street) to get there, but it’s worth it for the vegetarian thali (2 veggie curries with 2 rotis) for FJ$4.95. Cleverly origamied in butcher paper and wrapped in a plastic (the local term for a plastic bag) I sprint back up the big hill to work so that I can devour it without even resorting to a fork or spoon (I've become an expert at eating with roti rather than cutlery).</span><br /><span style="text-align: center;"><br /></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rbZUMYtbRZs/Uv8W9Epo3HI/AAAAAAAAAh4/VTfXJ8hHvI8/s1600/DSCN3191.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rbZUMYtbRZs/Uv8W9Epo3HI/AAAAAAAAAh4/VTfXJ8hHvI8/s1600/DSCN3191.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Running the traffic gauntlet to get to the Curry House.</div><br />This culinary discovery has piqued my interest in cooking Indian food at home – taking advantage of the amazing seafood and produce at the market to make a more healthy version of what’s available at restaurants and also to prepare me for the sad time when we’ll have to leave Fiji (and the Curry House, Khaza Khazana and my other favourite, Maya Dhaba).<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51KsEeyj-WL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_SX385_SY500_CR,0,0,385,500_SH20_OU02_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51KsEeyj-WL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_SX385_SY500_CR,0,0,385,500_SH20_OU02_.jpg" height="320" width="246" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">What my Rick Stein book looked like before a cat peed on the book jacket.</div><br />Santa brought me a <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rick-Steins-India-Stein/dp/1849905789" target="_blank">Rick Stein’s India cookbook</a>. I’ve managed to find all of the non-mainstream ingredients that I've needed from Halwai’s Spice World (aka Zealot Agencies aka Halwai’s Spice Castle). I briefly earned the scorn of the proprietor by asking if he sold coriander seed, which I couldn't find in any of the little store-packed plastic bags. “Do I sell coriander seed?” he muttered to himself leading me to a large burlap sack full of coriander seed, which the locals obviously buy in amounts that would take me a lifetime to get through. At that point, a lovely middle-aged Indo-Fijian fellow shopper took my arm and led me through the rest of my shopping list.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0Zk7xw3f4zo/Uv8XDhj_XuI/AAAAAAAAAiA/Vd7sIc-IvGE/s1600/DSCN3188.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0Zk7xw3f4zo/Uv8XDhj_XuI/AAAAAAAAAiA/Vd7sIc-IvGE/s1600/DSCN3188.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">The name of this place is lost on me, but it has every Indian Spice imaginable.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 13px;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qRl1B-2GAuE/Uv8XG96meBI/AAAAAAAAAiI/9NK_6GiNlFU/s1600/DSCN3189.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qRl1B-2GAuE/Uv8XG96meBI/AAAAAAAAAiI/9NK_6GiNlFU/s1600/DSCN3189.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">It truly is a castle of spice.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 13px;"><br /></span></div>Don’t get me wrong – there are plenty of places to eat lunch in Suva – the little deli upstairs at Prouds makes good sandwiches, the food courts at Tappoo and MCHH have a huge amount of choice – noodles, Korean, Fijian, etc…). There’s even a McDonald’s. But by destroying my prejudices about what a restaurant should look like, I have totally expanded my culinary horizons. And for a person in their 50th year that’s been obsessed with food since birth, that’s quite an achievement.<br /><div><br /></div>MaryBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14910505245295673426noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7606733004457432182.post-36650952439736718542014-01-07T00:24:00.000-08:002014-01-07T00:25:18.398-08:00There’s no place like home...By mid-December, home was feeling very far away. Worn out by work, emotionally fraught by the death of our hand-raised kitten by a pack of dogs and exhausted by the increasing heat and humidity, I was ready to escape from Suva for a few weeks. Home not only felt far away, it really was far away. While we achieved a three month sea voyage in a mere thirty five hours I cannot recommend it. A younger body can probably withstand being confined in a small space like a battery hen for two 10-11 hour flights in a row, but as I am in my 50th year I can say with complete certainty that it is not a good idea. I made the mistake of grabbing a burrito at the new food court at the international terminal at LAX and eating it as we sat down on our flight to London. I now know what a boa constrictor feels like after it swallows a small goat.<br /><br />Having been away from the North East of England for sixteen months, my not very surprising conclusions were that it was dark and full of germs. Of course it is also full of some of my favourite people in the entire world and this more than made up for living with heavy colds in a perpetual cycle of dusk and night. For those of you unfamiliar with the Newcastle upon Tyne area, it’s famous for three things: the locals (Geordies) and their <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1334135/As-Britain-shivers-Newcastle-girls-prove-theyre-frightened-snow.html"><span id="goog_2074617443"></span>imperviousness to the cold<span id="goog_2074617444"></span></a> (boob tubes and miniskirts at -10c? Really?); their <a href="http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/newcastle-sayings-updated-top-56-6466922" target="_blank">dialect </a>(wye aye, man); and football (Howay the lads!). I love Newcastle for many reasons, including the fact that a women 30 years younger than me ringing up my groceries calls me “pet” without the slightest affectation, that the area continues to undergo a transformative food renaissance and that the surrounding countryside and coastline is full of amazing places with very few people to spoil it.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ba8l8OJWyqc/UsuyWYz7rkI/AAAAAAAAAgM/D3_AfQCfUwg/s1600/Optimized-DSCN3083.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ba8l8OJWyqc/UsuyWYz7rkI/AAAAAAAAAgM/D3_AfQCfUwg/s1600/Optimized-DSCN3083.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">&nbsp;Our friend David, the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/earthdoctors.co.uk?fref=ts" target="_blank">Earth Doctor Baker</a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />Experiencing my first Christmas in the England in the late 1980s, the excess was shocking to me. Any culture where you’re expected to eat a dried fruit and suet pudding which has been drenched in brandy and lightened up with either crème anglaise or double cream after a day of eating canapés and a full turkey dinner is serious about testing the limits of overindulgence and waistbands. And it goes on for days – Christmas starts around the end of the first week of December with parties and ends when everyone feels ill from chronic over-eating and -drinking on the first of January. Of course all resolutions about losing weight are on hold until the last Terry’s Chocolate Orange and wedge of Stilton is gone. I am pleased to say that our 2014 Christmas didn't disappoint – amazing food, wine, wonderful friends and family. How lucky we are to love and get along with our families!<br /><br />However, it was strange to be home without really being home. The sense of displacement was slightly discombobulating – like the sense of vertigo when you’re standing in the surf and a wave is receding around your ankles. We declined the kind offer from the tenant of our house to come meet her and have a look around as it just sounded too weird. We left feeling like we had only really just begun our visit, already looking forward to and making plans to see everyone again.<br /><br />Thankfully, we’d plan to break up our trip in California on the way home to see family. Our flight was uneventful except for the bizarre use of the English language by the flight attendant on American Airlines. At one point she said, “Please wait for the captain to extinguish the seatbelt sign before leaving your seats”. Are they on fire? Powered by gaslight? Perhaps we need to stay in our seats while he traipses up and down the aisles with his candle snuffer?<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1riXEl_5Dpw/UsuyZt4HTDI/AAAAAAAAAgc/_EcoqSudxL8/s1600/Optimized-DSCN3141.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1riXEl_5Dpw/UsuyZt4HTDI/AAAAAAAAAgc/_EcoqSudxL8/s1600/Optimized-DSCN3141.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://spudnutshop.com/" target="_blank">Spudnuts </a>- just one more reason to love the USA</div><br />The Santa Barbara weather was like summer and we savoured the cool sunshine, having been warned about the increasing heat and humidity in Suva. Again, there was too much eating and drinking (and shopping in the sales) and before we knew it, it was time to go home, this time to Fiji. Back at LAX, we decided to forego burritos and stick with sushi at the Flying Fish. As an American I was totally embarrassed by the waiting staff there – we want you to serve us food, not form a lifetime bond with you. The final straw was when we paid for our meal. “Ooh, you bank with Wells Fargo too”, she cooed, cuddling my debit card to her cheek. Not only is that inappropriate, it’s unsanitary.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CScgpWAfjzQ/UsuyaGKNoXI/AAAAAAAAAgg/VPIlzIw1UdY/s1600/Optimized-DSCN3161.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CScgpWAfjzQ/UsuyaGKNoXI/AAAAAAAAAgg/VPIlzIw1UdY/s1600/Optimized-DSCN3161.JPG" height="230" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Beachcombing at Gaviota State Park</div><br />We were excited to get back to our cats and the new Damodar City complex, which contains an expat-life-changing grocery store (see <a href="http://fromseattletosuva.wordpress.com/2013/12/30/consumer-frenzy-the-new-new-world-supermarket-at-damodar-city/">post about it here</a>). Home feels so much more like home when you can get A1 Steak Sauce, green taco sauce and marshmallow fluff.<br /><div><br /></div>MaryBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14910505245295673426noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7606733004457432182.post-47333981546923872752013-12-27T09:46:00.000-08:002013-12-27T09:47:12.574-08:00The Fiji ListNew Year, new resolution, and I here I state publicly that in 2014 I will post on my blog at least once a month. I've enjoyed keeping the blog for its diary-like qualities and for the challenge of stringing words together in a pleasing way, but what I didn't expect was the number of people who have contacted me through the blog. Some want to know practical details about living in Fiji because they are arriving imminently. &nbsp;Some are considering moving to Fiji and want to know the down and dirty on specific aspects of expat life. Then there are the other requests for guest blog posts (not a chance – too busy to write my own blog, thanks very much), a request for an interview for a travel magazine (unfortunately dropped into my inbox during frenzied work activity, so ignored) and a very sweet request to be interviewed as part of a student project (Clay &amp; Co - you know who you are!).<br /><br />When I first arrived in Suva I observed that the happiest expats were those that are counting down to their leaving dates. At first I took this as a sign that you could only be happy in Fiji when you were on your way out. Eventually I figured out that these people were frantically squeezing in their Fiji list of things to do (aka bucket list – hate that term) in their remaining tenure, resulting in a steady stream of what most people would consider holidays of a lifetime.<br /><br />Once I realised this, I knew that we needed to make our own Fiji list and, more importantly, start ticking the items off without the pressure of an impending move. At the top of our list was visiting the Yasawas, so at the end of September, we booked a week long Blue Lagoon Cruise. Now, cruising isn't our thing - I strive not to look anything like those sweaty, slightly lost-looking people wandering through the streets of Suva with cruise-branded lanyards around their necks. &nbsp;Any local rip-off artist that approaches me when a cruise ship is in town gets a “talk to the hand” palm in their face and a don’t-mess-with-me-I-live-here look. &nbsp;However, the small boutique-boat BLC got rave reviews from friends and Anna, unlike us, was so enamoured with the idea of a cruise that she agreed to share a cabin with us.<br /><br />Armed with a brand new underwater camera for John, we left Suva on the 7:30am Coral Express bus and by lunchtime we’d entered Fiji’s parallel universe – the well-oiled, international tourist world that is Denarau Island. Clean and slick, we finally saw what the majority of visitors see when they come to Fiji and we liked it. Except for the prices. How much for a Fiji Gold? You’re having a laugh - at our expense.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MqSQCHOMn8I/Ur23zwEb-II/AAAAAAAAAfY/wNA0WpyqQtY/s1600/Photo+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MqSQCHOMn8I/Ur23zwEb-II/AAAAAAAAAfY/wNA0WpyqQtY/s320/Photo+1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Beer o'clock on deck.</div><br />Because John and I have gradually turned into grumpy old people, we eyed the children running around the dock with our cruise ship name tags on their shirts and grumbled about how we were certain that the website had stated that children were not allowed on the ship. Boarding the ship, we were amazed to find that we were joined by only 14 other passengers on a ship that can hold around 65 passengers. The crew were friendly, the food generous and, despite our cantankerousness, the children delightful. How could you refuse to join a fancy hat competition when a nine year old offers to share her beachcombing hat-adorning treasures with you?<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bLZ6y-N5NbA/Ur25A6SjHzI/AAAAAAAAAfo/KtBSeQitu6Q/s1600/photo+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bLZ6y-N5NbA/Ur25A6SjHzI/AAAAAAAAAfo/KtBSeQitu6Q/s320/photo+2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Yasawa-i-Lau caves - coldest I've been in Fiji.</div><br />During the next seven days, we stopped at Modriki Island (where Castaway was filmed), visited villages, made new friends, ate five meals a day, stopped smiling for several days due to sunburned lips (I was still happy inside), snorkeled until we were pruney, dived on healthy reefs and generally reveled in some of the most beautiful scenery on the planet. I never knew that water came in so many shades of blue.<br /><br />John took hundred (thousands?) of underwater photographs – mostly close ups. His attention to the art of photographing corals is laudable except that it means that his buddy (usually me) could be kidnapped by pirates or eaten by sharks (or both) without him noticing. On one dive, his dive buddy saw five sharks and he saw none.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u8MlNZAKnEQ/Ur27mcED7kI/AAAAAAAAAf0/5c-eIoC6lGY/s1600/photo+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u8MlNZAKnEQ/Ur27mcED7kI/AAAAAAAAAf0/5c-eIoC6lGY/s320/photo+2.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">The ship tied to a coconut tree in the Blue Lagoon.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-h-p-6d3QbSE/Ur28Qk9V8ZI/AAAAAAAAAf8/W0dGzUak2r0/s1600/photo+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-h-p-6d3QbSE/Ur28Qk9V8ZI/AAAAAAAAAf8/W0dGzUak2r0/s320/photo+2.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">One of John's amazing close-ups.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>I’d love to say that we’re definitely going to go back to the Yasawas – especially now that we've seen lots of placed that we’d like to go back to. However, we still have other items on our Fiji List to tick off first including the islands of Taveuni, Kadavu and the Lau group, the old capital of Levuka and whitewater rafting on the Navua River. So much to do - fortunately we still have a lot of time.<br /><div><br /></div>MaryBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14910505245295673426noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7606733004457432182.post-179575967669222002013-08-23T23:49:00.000-07:002013-08-23T23:49:10.029-07:00Cooking with ContrabandI waste an inordinate amount of time productively. Since moving to Fiji, I've expanded my vocabulary playing Words with Friends to include the very useful qi, dox, kine and za. I now have a good working knowledge of how Twitter works to the point that I gave my sister an hour long tutorial on Skype. &nbsp;I have an active and attractive account on Pinterest (who takes all of those amazing photos?) and have accumulated about a thousand recipes to try some time in the future when I've got time. Oh, wait a minute, I do have time.<br /><br />Actually, I do cook a lot here. After the initial honeymoon period with Fiji when there were still so many restaurants to try and not be disappointed by we ate out a lot. Eventually, we settled on our two favourites – Maya Dhaba (best butter chicken and naan bread ever) and Bad Dog (sashimi starter is the best thing on the menu). The combination of expanding waistbands and a shrinking bank account meant that cooking again seemed like a good idea. During my early attempts I usually ended up having to shower afterwards because I’d get so sweaty (one particularly memorable occasion included carmelised banana pancakes on a blazing hot morning – what was I thinking?). However, I learned how and where to shop (the market, Lazy Chef, Whaleys), what to avoid (local sausages and minced beef) and to turn the air con on if the temperature outside was already uncomfortable.<br /><br />Unless it’s tipping it down or the outside atmosphere is sauna-like, barbecuing is an option and we do it a lot. In fact, I've started to wonder if I’m getting medieval northern European lung disease from the amount of particulate matter I've inhaled trying to light slightly damp charcoal with substandard firelighters. Our little back patio is eerily like our little patio in England, except in England we don’t light our patio with Tiki lanterns and the bats flying overhead don’t look capable of carrying off small dogs.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Mojr7HZB-qI/UhhWGgmQctI/AAAAAAAAAbw/xSuCs_4hQzs/s1600/DSCN1288.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Mojr7HZB-qI/UhhWGgmQctI/AAAAAAAAAbw/xSuCs_4hQzs/s320/DSCN1288.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">&nbsp;Alex and Anna demonstrate the correct use of the patio.</div><br />Travelling and eating go together like wine and cheese, bread and butter and Fred and Ginger. When I’m in California I head straight for In–n-Out and order a cheeseburger, fries and a chocolate shake, eat Mexican food from taquerias, search for the perfect margarita and eat a lot of hot Italian sausages. In France it’s Breton butter with crunch seasalt crystals smeared thickly on bread. In Fiji, it’s tuna. Tuna steaks on the grill with garlic aioli and <a href="http://mixedgreensblog.com/2008/07/29/seasons-eatings/roasted-tomato-salsa-tastes-good-you-can-dance-to-it/" target="_blank">grilled tomato salsa</a>, made with mint and fresh coriander (dhania here in Fiji). Raw tuna sliced and served with Japanese rice balls, wasabi, lime and finely diced locally grown chillies and fresh ginger. Leftover tuna made into salad. Tuna, tuna, tuna. We never get sick of it in our attempts to deplete the Pacific of its most delicious fish. We get our tuna from Island Ika, who post what’s in everyday on their&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Island-Ika/127109493012?fref=ts" target="_blank">Facebook page&nbsp;</a>and, refreshingly from a health and safety perspective, keep their fish on ice. We have to eat a lifetime’s worth of tuna during our stay here as the average lump of tuna that I buy for sashimi at home would cost about a week’s salary in the UK.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WcwqxjuT4Vo/UhhWOo1VdRI/AAAAAAAAAb4/9Yf_HnIkYiI/s1600/DSCN1303.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WcwqxjuT4Vo/UhhWOo1VdRI/AAAAAAAAAb4/9Yf_HnIkYiI/s320/DSCN1303.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">My foodie photos will not be on Pinterest any time soon.</div><br />Other things that we feel the need to consume a lot of during our stay in Fiji include passionfruit, pineapple, cassava (who would have thought tree root could taste so delicious?) and New Zealand’s Tip Top Cookies and Cream Ice Cream. Local fish and produce are relatively inexpensive as long as you buy in season – during my year here, tomatoes have ranged in price from FJ$1 to FJ$18 a heap. Heaps are the unit of measure in the markets here and literally are heaps of whatever either piled up on the table or in small bowls. It does pay to ask how much things are before you start getting them to fill your bags at the market just in case you end up with a FJ$7.00 red onion like I did.<br /><br />Imported food, on the other hand, is expensive and reliance on it can lead to bitter disappointment. Mayonnaise, for example. I grew up eating Best Foods mayonnaise, which personally, I think is the best in the world. Some of you may know it as Hellmans since though the two companies merged in 1932 they haven’t got around to unifying their brand names. I was relieved to see Best Foods for sale at Cost u Less when we first arrived, but after a few months there was none on the shelves. At that point, I hadn't learned the finer points of hoarding and paid for it. Antipodean mayonnaise is disgusting. I don’t know what they make it out of, but every brand we tried tasted like salad cream made with machine oil and a large dollop of sugar. We mourned for garlic aioli and tuna salad as did others who lamented to lack of good mayo on the Suva Expat Facebook page. However, we did drop a few pounds.<br /><br />When we first arrived, we had English visitors, one of whom was incensed that the best condiment in the world, A1 Steak Sauce, had been invented by the Americans. Well, I could write an entire post about Americans and condiments (my neighbour in the UK who inherited all of our condiments joked that he had a special cupboard made just for our mustard). Lo and behold, out shopping the next day I found A1. Anna was instantly enamoured and it went straight to her top ten tastes of all times. Of course, we haven’t seen it since.<br /><br />My current obsession at the moment is sourdough. September is sourdough month and with that in mind, I thought that I’d see if you could make a successful sourdough starter in Fiji with nothing but rye flour and water. Fijian microbes are notorious for being super-sized. You are advised by people that have been here longer than you and survived with all of their limbs intact that any cut or scratched bit needs regular liberal applications of anti-bacterial cream and that you need to have a low threshold for antibiotic seeking behaviour if you get any sort of lurgy. Well, I can tell you that within 48 hours I had a sourdough that smelled like Newcastle Brewery on a still day bubbling away on my counter.<br /><br />On the counter is a bowl of the good stuff waiting to be made into sourdough poppy seed pancakes tomorrow morning. I brought the poppy seeds back from Australia in May because I couldn't find any here. I've since been told that poppy seeds are now on a list of things that cannot be brought into the country, presumably because there’s a fear that we might start producing opium. Well, I’m not going to waste my poppy seeds trying to grow them. I’m going to eat them and savour every precious bite.<br /><div><br /></div>MaryBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14910505245295673426noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7606733004457432182.post-56706534443821843822013-07-27T21:23:00.000-07:002013-07-28T11:20:39.296-07:00My new favourite expressionHow could I not have heard the term FoMO (Fear of Missing Out)? I know the FoMO concept intimately, having suffered from it my entire life. It explains quite a lot of my behavioural quirks, like wandering around the house while brushing my teeth in case something else more interesting is going on or appearing at breakfast when we have houseguests, half dressed with wet hair, lest I miss a bit of news that my family members with certainly neglect to tell me later.<br /><br />Being a FoMOist has its upsides. It’s what allows you to chivvy your companions along while walking around strange cities as you search for a restaurant better than the one you are standing in front of, which means occasionally you stumble on a real gem. It’s what gives you the curiosity to try every strange fruit that you come across in the market despite the fact that, up until you tried a mangosteen two days ago, you haven’t tasted a delicious new fruit since you tried a kiwifruit in 1978. It’s what makes you appear adventurous when what you really are is a perennial worrier, wondering if something bigger, better or more interesting is just out of sight around the theoretical corner.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1HSfx6-Vpz8/UfSZW1bDAdI/AAAAAAAAAZ4/9t3_Ke9pOhU/s1600/DSCN2219.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1HSfx6-Vpz8/UfSZW1bDAdI/AAAAAAAAAZ4/9t3_Ke9pOhU/s320/DSCN2219.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Strange fruit – mangosteen, where have you been all of my life?</div><br />However, I suspect many FoMOists are paralysed with indecision because for every positive decision they make, there are the infinite possibilities that they’ve excluded by making that decision. This is typically demonstrated at restaurants, where FoMOists have a difficult time ordering from a large menu (“if I have the Caesar salad, which I love, I won’t be able to try the flambéed frogs’ legs, which might be delicious!”).<br /><br />Of course, indecision impacts on bigger life events. For example, if you decide to be a fireman, you have passively decided not to be a butcher, a baker or a brain surgeon among other things. Therefore, I suspect most FoMOists let their lives play out, occasionally making some inexplicable (to themselves and to their friends) monumental decision based on nothing more than the fear that there might be something on the other side of that decision than is more exhilarating than where they happen to be standing at the moment of decision-making. That’s my excuse anyway.<br /><br />Mind you, there was little opportunity for FoMO on mine and Anna’s recent trip to California because our days were absolutely packed with great things. Alex joined us from the UK and we saw every brother, sister, niece, nephew, brother- and sister-in-law on my side of the family. I also managed to see some of my very oldest friends from my early childhood who had the decency to still look young. Alex and Anna experienced their first US 4th of July (not a particularly popular holiday in the UK), we saw the awesome San Jose Earthquakes-LA Galaxy match at Stanford Stadium, picked berries in Santa Ynez, squeezed in three family birthday parties and went to the beach as many times as possible.<br /><br />While we were stuffing in as much California culture as we could, John was back in Fiji running the Pacific Science Association Conference and looking after the four kittens that were delivered to our living room by a little stray that we’d been feeding. The conference was a success and the kittens well-adjusted enough to place in good homes. And yes, I do tell John he’s a hero at least a couple of times a week.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PzOlkH-mlDs/UfSalYdG2rI/AAAAAAAAAaM/6SoqPgRIXSI/s1600/DSCN2205.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PzOlkH-mlDs/UfSalYdG2rI/AAAAAAAAAaM/6SoqPgRIXSI/s200/DSCN2205.JPG" width="150" /></a><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pSQfGAtE8dI/UfSaS-SieFI/AAAAAAAAAaE/hLq8MQyGaho/s1600/DSCN1855.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pSQfGAtE8dI/UfSaS-SieFI/AAAAAAAAAaE/hLq8MQyGaho/s200/DSCN1855.JPG" width="200" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">The kittens were replaced by the same number of toads soon after they were re-homed.</div><br />Back in Fiji, our UK next door neighbours came to visit on their round-the-world adventure. They embraced the Fijian experience whole-heartedly (despite it being so chilly that I had to don a fleece several times), going rafting on the Navua River, walking along the sea wall into Suva for a day’s sight-seeing, going off the rope swing at Colo-i-Suva and learning (and using) basic Fijian words. Their boys are going to be spoiled for life as on their second snorkel off of Naigani, we saw a white-tipped shark, a Ridley’s turtle as well as amazing coral cover. Seriously, there will be no point in them visiting the Caribbean now. On their last night here, we went to our usual, The Bad Dog, to toast them<i> bon voyage</i> with colourful cocktails/mocktails with them in their full bula regalia.<br /><br />It’s times like that I can ignore my FoMO tendencies because I’m sure that if I were able to peek around the theoretical corner, my little piece of the world would be better than anything I might see on the other side.MaryBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14910505245295673426noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7606733004457432182.post-85171172777239652512013-06-06T17:59:00.000-07:002013-06-06T18:00:29.023-07:00Concept HomeA couple of days before we left Australia for Fiji after John’s successful op, I was startled to realise that I was looking forward to going home. I wanted to see our daughter, our cats and sleep in our own bed but it was the sensation of “going home” to Suva that caught me off guard.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--5U5e_vwFeI/UbEuUKMOdFI/AAAAAAAAAZE/V92ELAjaLn8/s1600/DSCN0547.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--5U5e_vwFeI/UbEuUKMOdFI/AAAAAAAAAZE/V92ELAjaLn8/s320/DSCN0547.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Our Fijian home away from home.</div><br />How and when the shift to having Suva feel like home is something that I was unaware of and I’m sort of at a loss to explain. It’s not like we’re surrounded by our own stuff here as we left most of it in a friend’s garage in the North of England. I still feel like we’re camping out in someone else’s house. Besides, after losing so many of our possessions (and our jobs) in 1989 due to Hurricane Hugo when we lived on St Croix, I've sort of lost my attachment to material things. Nothing like experiencing a storm of the century first hand, emerging without things but with all of your loved ones intact to make you realise what’s important in life.<br /><br />Some of it must be down to creating a life for myself here. Life as a trailing spouse (hate that expression) can be a terribly lonely experience. You have to put yourself out there to find purposeful activity and friends even if you’re painfully shy. Otherwise you’ll end up only socialising with your partner’s colleagues. Not that I’m suggesting that your partner’s colleagues (or mine) aren't lovely, fun people, but you’d be very lucky indeed to get all of your emotional and social support from a pre-selected group of people.<br /><br />When we moved to England from the West Indies, John started travelling a lot for work. In fact, we hadn't been in Newcastle for two weeks before he basically moved to Leeds to do some lab work at St James Infirmary (cutting edge science on sea anemones in a human fertility lab – imagine the looks when people saw what was in his petri dishes in the lift). I remember that time as being lonely, grey and very, very cold. Then we moved out to our lovely neighbourhood in Northumberland (in 1992 and we stayed until 2012) and our children were born and John continued to travel, but to foreign, exotic, tropical countries for long periods.<br /><br />In the early days, he’d come home from a trip and I’d say “thank God you’re home, let’s go out!” at the same time that he’d say “thank God I’m home, I’m not leaving the house!” This was not compatible with a happy marriage. That’s when I had a parental “eureka” moment and started to engage our series of wonderful babysitters (Jenny C, Andrea &amp; Leila R, Lynsey W) when John was away. This allowed me the freedom to attend girls’ nights at the pub, curry nights at friends, etc... Acquaintances that I knew from baby and toddler groups started to cement themselves into lifelong friendships through the shared experience of having a great time without being distracted by wiping snotty noses or keeping the children from breaking their necks on the play equipment.<br /><br />At some point during that time there was a seismic shift and Hagg Bank, a higgledy-piggledy collection of two-up two-down brick railway cottages perched on the River Tyne, became home. But not just the place I craved to return to at the end of the day for a cup of tea or something a little stronger, it became my geographic and emotional centre. It was the place that I’d put down the deepest roots, the place that I am certain that I will forever get wistful about when I’m away from it. My late sister had a theory about the deep sense of home – home is not where you've grown up, it's where you've grown things like children or gardens – whatever requires love and attention.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-78RISSGfBAk/UbEvK2D8crI/AAAAAAAAAZM/0cmhfePxLbM/s1600/Hagg+Bank+Allotment.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-78RISSGfBAk/UbEvK2D8crI/AAAAAAAAAZM/0cmhfePxLbM/s320/Hagg+Bank+Allotment.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">My vegetable garden - one of the things that I miss the most about England.</div><br />Of course going home to Hagg Bank would require kicking out the tenants, leaving our current jobs, finding new ones, disrupting Anna’s schooling, transporting the cats - not to mention getting all of our furniture out of the garage and reconstructing it from memory using Allen keys and a lot of expletives. So for the meantime, home is Suva. Our roots might not be deep, but they are growing.<br /><div><br /></div>MaryBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14910505245295673426noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7606733004457432182.post-952948573883759272013-04-28T21:36:00.001-07:002013-04-29T03:28:41.894-07:00Birthday Reflections<br />Everyone knows that getting old sucks. At least that’s what you think when you’re young. However, when you get to middle-age - when the “c-word” changes from the word that rhymes with hunt to the word that rhymes with answer - you realise that you want to become that cheerful frail old lady that you see walking very slowly down the road pulling her shopping trolley or the old man with the flat cap sitting at the bus stop. The alternative is just not that appealing. The “I hope I die before I get old” attitude is a young person’s lie. And while it is tolerated with a knowing smile by us old(er) people, the holding of such a belief is a sure sign of a not-fully-formed mind.<br /><br />And getting old&nbsp;isn't&nbsp;all bad. Ok, you might forget what things are called, what you were saying mid-sentence or that the phone that&nbsp;you've&nbsp;been looking for the last five minutes is actually in your hand, but if you’re lucky you might finally be making a decent wage, have started to take yourself less seriously and have acquired a modicum of wisdom.<br /><br />When I turned 36, my husband forgot my birthday.* I’m not going to lie – it felt like the end of the world and our marriage. His subsequent attempts to buy me presents (camping gear – hah!) and a lemon tree (which I purposely neglected for several years before it finally gave up the ghost) only made matters worse. Looking back on it now I realise that I was the perpetrator of my own misery that day, which my mother went to great pains to explain to me at the time. Did I listen? I never did before and I&nbsp;wasn't&nbsp;going to start then. Well, eventually I did figure it out, but I would have been a lot happier if I’d been quicker on the uptake.<br /><br />A marital milestone occurred when we went our first family holiday with only one nearly grown-up child. Camping in Cornwall for ten days sounded like a perfect way to test the impending dynamics of our shrinking family unit while Alex was in California with cousins. Realising the long-term impact of the following days, John and I made a pact not to bicker - for the entire trip. Now, those of you that have ever camped know that setting up a tent is pretty much the only time that you are 100% guaranteed to fall out with someone. (For a hilarious book about family camping, read <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tent-Bucket-Me-Emma-Kennedy/dp/0091926793" target="_blank">The Tent, the Bucket and Me</a>). Well, John and I set up our enormous over-sized tent on a blustery, damp day on the The Lizard with nary a cross word. I’m not saying that a miracle happened on that trip, but it was pretty close.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://sphotos-f.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/37577_10150218840750430_2462498_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://sphotos-f.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/37577_10150218840750430_2462498_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Anna and John on the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_West_Coast_Path" target="_blank">South West Coast Path</a> in 2010.</div><br />Fast forward a couple of years and I can say with complete certainty, that if we&nbsp;hadn't&nbsp;progressed past the Bickerson stage, we’d never been able to pull off our move to Fiji. First, there’s no way Anna would have come. Second, third and fourth, there were about a thousand times during the process of the move and settling in period that either of us could have said “sod this for a game of soldiers” or worse. And finally, if we’d expended precious energy on brooding, reviling and recriminating, we would have been very lonely indeed. <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://sphotos-c.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/37577_10150218840765430_4899378_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://sphotos-c.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/37577_10150218840765430_4899378_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">A wonderful Cornish holiday...</div><br />I’m not saying that we always get along. When we arrived in Melbourne recently for John’s gallbladder operation, we’d been travelling for about ten hours. Opening the hotel room door, we agreed that we’d arrived just in the nick of time because we’d begun to grate on each other’s nerves. The difference is that I didn’t demand to know why I was irritating him and vice&nbsp;versa.&nbsp; That’s because we’re finally old enough to know better.<br /><br />On the day of John’s surgery, I turned 49. I recognised the birthday card he pulled out of the nightstand - he’d obviously purchased in the Ian Potter Gallery gift shop when I went to the toilet the day before. (As a good friend pointed out, it’s better than getting a card from the toilet while I was in the gift shop.) Inside he’d written “Happy Birthday, Beautiful Wife”. Honestly, could there be a better gift than that?<br /><br />John’s hospital roommate was a talkative elderly gentleman called Derrick. Derrick was in Exeter during WWII. He briefly recounted the bombing raids by the Germans, saying finally, “And in the mornings we woke up and said ‘good morning’ and we meant it”.<br /><br />Eventually the “c-word” will start to mean care home and an adventure will be travelling down to the bottom of the garden and back. Until then and beyond, I plan to greet each morning with a grateful hello and I’m going to mean it too.<br /><br /><br /><i>*In fairness, John has asked me to state that once when he presented me with a gift of beautiful earrings on our anniversary, I argued the toss with him that he’d got the dates wrong. He&nbsp;hadn't.</i><br /><div><br /></div>MaryBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14910505245295673426noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7606733004457432182.post-90312844235743474892013-04-06T16:24:00.000-07:002013-04-06T16:25:14.918-07:00Life, Applied in a Slapdash Fashion<br />When visitors arrive, Fiji shines. For the last two-plus weeks our son, Alex, has been visiting from snowy Sheffield in the UK during his Easter break. While the allure of rainy Suva wears off pretty quickly (visiting the university bookstore is on the guide book’s top ten things to do in Suva), the rest of the island, Viti Levu, makes up for it.<br /><br />One of John’s New Zealand-based colleagues said that his family views the time that they lived in Fiji as time spent in a parallel universe. If you make the effort, you can regularly do things which most people only dream about doing or only do once in a lifetime. <a href="http://fijisharkdive.com/" target="_blank">Diving with sharks</a>? Just down the road out of Pacific Harbor. <a href="http://takalana.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Seeing spinner dolphin</a>? Just up the road at Moon Reef. Stay in an oceanside hotel room, with your own steps down to the beach? Not a problem – and you’ll get a local rate to boot.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8HWFQ8YCdDs/UWCq4vWsPxI/AAAAAAAAAYE/nNb345SUh9Y/s1600/DSCN1307.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8HWFQ8YCdDs/UWCq4vWsPxI/AAAAAAAAAYE/nNb345SUh9Y/s320/DSCN1307.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">The view from the front door of the <i>bure</i>&nbsp;at Wananavu.</div><br />The problem is real life gets in the way of doing all of this fun stuff. Anna has homework. John has to go to work. I am mysteriously busy without being in paid employment. Weeks fly by and, before you know it, you’ve lived in Fiji for over seven months, acquired three cats and have been completely deskilled by your housekeeper. So for maximum enjoyment, you either have to get out more or have visitors to force your hand.<br /><br />In a move that completely confused the cats, Alex’s arrived just after John was admitted to the hospital. They gave Alex a wide berth, occasionally venturing forth to give him a good sniff before retreating a safe distance to observe the younger, fitter version of John. John’s discharge from hospital coincided with the kids starting a<a href="http://club.skindeepfiji.com/" target="_blank"> three day dive course</a>. Besides a big bloody blow-out of cartilage, blood and snot after the first dive and some trouble with clearing their ears, they enjoyed themselves.<br /><br />Anna’s school broke up on the Thursday, so first thing Good Friday morning, we headed northeast up towards Rakiraki to go to <a href="http://www.wananavu.com/" target="_blank">Wananavu Beach Resort</a>. When we arrived, the sea between Wananavu and the nearby island of Nananu-i-Ra was smooth as glass, so we kayaked across. Stopping at the reef to have a quick snorkel, I spotted a medium sized spider on the side of Anna and Alex’s kayak. My attempt to knock it off by splashing water on it did not work and it ran back into the kayak where Anna was sat. Have I mentioned that Anna does not like spiders? Well, I nearly drowned sucking up water through my snorkel laughing at Anna’s reaction before I realised that her running up and down an unstable kayak over a sharp reef was pretty dangerous. Eventually, John managed to get the spider to jump onto our kayak, which was a fairly unsatisfactory outcome for everyone bar the spider.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-etnLUrAqC_w/UWCsWITYWeI/AAAAAAAAAYU/e6XjNmaQig8/s1600/Fish+Wananavu.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-etnLUrAqC_w/UWCsWITYWeI/AAAAAAAAAYU/e6XjNmaQig8/s320/Fish+Wananavu.png" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Good snorkeling off Nananu-i-Ra.</div><br />As John was still a bit weak and I am a weakling, we turned back before we made it all of the way across while the children persevered. Our kayak back was dream-like. The sky was a monotonous grey and because the water surface was like a millpond, it was difficult to tell where the sky ended and the sea began. If we stopped to drift, we could hear schools of fish splashing around on the surface. I was very keen to see some dolphin, so we paddled from fish-splash to fish-splash hoping to see what was causing the fish to jump. When John started to slap his paddle slightly erratically onto the surface of the water, I asked him what he was doing. He said that he was feigning the sounds of an injured fish to attract sharks. Honestly, who would be crazy enough to go out in a small kayak in the middle of the Pacific with a marine biologist?<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YBcjJqQef-0/UWCqvhiOVhI/AAAAAAAAAX4/L482egg6PU8/s1600/DSCN1315.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YBcjJqQef-0/UWCqvhiOVhI/AAAAAAAAAX4/L482egg6PU8/s320/DSCN1315.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">John's pre-op fat-free diet is making him grumpy.</div><div style="text-align: center;">Alex started referring to Anna as his adopted Spanish sister because of her tan.</div><br />The next day we had a pretty rubbish dive with Ra Divers. The weather&nbsp;wasn't&nbsp;great, the swell and current were quite difficult to cope with and the visibility was terrible. Also, despite being a fairly relaxed diver, I felt like I’d swallowed a swarm of bees diving with the children. As Alex said, the anxiety portion of your brain must hypertrophy when you give birth. I’m not sure that it ever returns to a normal size afterwards.<br /><br />Fortunately, the next day was absolutely gorgeous, so we kayaked back out past Nananu-i-Ra and did some amazing&nbsp;snorkeling&nbsp; We were out for hours and I felt like my exhausted arms might drop off by the time we got back. Our kayaking marathon revealed several issues regarding applying sunscreen. First, if you have hairy legs, spray sunscreen&nbsp;doesn't&nbsp;really work very well. Second, if you apply sunscreen in a slapdash fashion, your failed, non-systematic efforts will be revealed to all in bright red streaks. And finally, even if your children laugh at your silly hat, you can be smug when you’re the only one that returns without a pink nose.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wkKnYEMJVOc/UWCr-4j6p6I/AAAAAAAAAYI/6khGV9g0vD4/s1600/Mary+Wananavu.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wkKnYEMJVOc/UWCr-4j6p6I/AAAAAAAAAYI/6khGV9g0vD4/s320/Mary+Wananavu.png" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Silly hat? I laugh at your sunburned nose!</div><br />We had a couple of day in Suva doing laundry and waiting for Alex’s sunburn to calm down before Anna, Alex and I headed over to Denarau Island which is near the airport. Denarau is like a Disneyfied version of Fiji - serried rows of resorts, golf courses and housing developments bake in the tropical sun. It&nbsp;wouldn't&nbsp;be my first choice for a place to stay, but the high Western standards for cleanliness and service and the big hotel feel make it an easy place to relax. We stayed at the <a href="http://www.radissonblu.com/resort-fiji" target="_blank">Radisson </a>which was just fine.<br /><br />The kids parasailed and jet-skied while I enjoyed people watching and lying by the pool. Alex’s last night in Fiji was made special by a spectacular sunset and a wonderful dinner at the Steakhouse at the Westin. The steaks were delicious and the traditional farewell serenade by the waiting staff to Alex was really moving (or it could have been the wine).<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bOd8PXQuFQc/UWCshNIOn2I/AAAAAAAAAYY/I3h7843ogq8/s1600/DSCN1336.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bOd8PXQuFQc/UWCshNIOn2I/AAAAAAAAAYY/I3h7843ogq8/s320/DSCN1336.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Looks like a brochure shot, but it's just an ordinary day on Denarau...</div><br />We were really sad to see Alex off first thing the next morning. However, in all of the years that&nbsp;I've&nbsp;been saying goodbye to people,&nbsp;I've&nbsp;learned that the easiest way to make saying goodbye less painful is to already have the next trip booked. We’re going to see Alex in California in June, so it was sort of “see you later” rather than a tearful farewell, for which I am truly grateful.<br /><div><br /></div>MaryBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14910505245295673426noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7606733004457432182.post-1141164321778674682013-03-23T00:33:00.000-07:002013-03-23T00:35:58.137-07:00The Accidental Medical Tourist<br />Somehow, John and I managed to do virtually all of our pre-children travel without ever having to take an aspirin or buy a tube of antibiotic cream. However, since the arrival of our delightful children, now aged 19 and 16, we’ve made unexpected visits to hospitals and medical clinics in France, Italy, the Caribbean, the US and now, Fiji.<br /><br />Our first encounter with a foreign medical service was in the South of France when one of the children, probably due to bad parenting, was allowed to toddle very quickly on an uneven cobbled surface in a walled medieval town resulting in a head gash that spurted blood in such a spectacular fashion that people actually said “Mon Dieu!” when we ran past them back to the car. Of course by the time we saw the slightly impatient doctor, who I just know was inwardly tutting about over-protective American mothers, Alex’s wound didn’t look so gory and only required a couple of butterfly bandages. We had to pay approximately £35 for his care, but by some miracle of bureaucratic magic and our trusty <a href="http://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/Healthcareabroad/EHIC/Pages/about-the-ehic.aspx" target="_blank">E111 card</a>, we received a refund cheque from the French Government a few months later.<br /><br />The only other thing I remember about that day was that I accidently threw the rental car keys into large rubbish skip with a couple of really juicy peach stones and actually had to climb inside to retrieve them. Of course John thought that this was hilarious. I did not.<br /><br />The next foreign medical encounter of note was in St Croix in 1999. We all had some horrible lurgy over the Christmas holidays – a combination of fever, coughing and vomiting. We arrived at the airport for our departure looking like a family of zombies. The flight to Miami from London was memorable only because when one of the children was presented with their end of flight breakfast, an episode of projective vomiting ensued. Not surprisingly, no one in the remaining ten or so rows took up the offer of breakfast.<br /><br />Unfortunately, Anna did not get better. In a pattern that was to repeat itself, Alex complained about being sick more, so while Anna was slowly going off in the corner, we expended our parental energy on Alex. By the time we noticed Anna was really sick, she was really, really sick and ended up in having to be admitted to the hospital. John and I had previously avoided going to the hospital when we lived in St Croix in the late 80s and early 90s, except once when John was bitten by a dog and was told by the receptionist to go home and put a bandage on his bloodied finger.<br /><br />I cannot tell you how frustrating it was to be sitting in the reception of accident and emergency filling in insurance forms while Anna hung limply in John’s arms. However, in the West Indies, polite protocol is of upmost importance - just ask the tourist who arrived the same time as us with his foot wrapped in a bloody towel demanding to be seen by a doctor immediately. According to John, he was still sitting in the waiting room about ten hours later. Anyway, once you got past the horribly dirty A&amp;E reception, a fairly modern hospital with competent doctors awaited you.<br /><br />This was the first and last time that we accompanied John a work trip as we also infected John’s work colleagues, preventing them from diving for a good part of the trip. Having said that, the experience bonded the relationship between them and by the end of the trip they were engaged to be married. Amazingly, they were not put off having children and now have three of their own.<br /><br />In 2001, we took the children to Italy to see some mid-winter sunlight which was sorely lacking in the north of England. Unfortunately, they both had colds and Alex basically could not eat without severe ear pain. This was horribly ironic, because one of the main reasons to travel to Italy is to eat. We had a lovely sunny day out at Pompeii when Anna started to fade in an alarming way. &nbsp;By 3am she was in such a state that I was wandering the streets of Naples looking for a taxi as our bizarre hostel had no night clerk. Eventually I found some guys guarding market stalls, who kindly interrupted their game of throwing rocks at pigeons to find me a taxi and give me a blanket to wrap Anna up in.<br /><br />When we finally found a hospital with an A&amp;E department, we were sat in a triage room with Anna sitting on the examination table. The doctor, obviously an eminent one by the looks of his young (mostly good-looking female) entourage, arrived looking like he just woke up and smelling like he’d been asleep in an ashtray. He pulled up a chair in front of Anna, folded his hands together, as if in prayer and rested his head on his hands. Everyone sat expectantly. There was a slight discomfort in the room when we realised that he’d actually fallen asleep. Then completely unexpectedly, he looked up at Anna, all wild-eyed and shouted in English, “What’s wrong with you?!” I don’t know who was more terrified – me or her.<br /><br />We high-tailed it out of there pretty quickly and in my non-existent Italian explained to the waiting taxi to take us to another hospital - any other hospital. In the end, we were looked after by a very good doctor who, after a chest x-ray and a thorough examination, prescribed a mountain of medicine (which was the only thing that we had to pay for). When we got back to the UK, we went straight to the GP, who confiscated most of the medicine and told us that he was sending the thick black drops that I’d been squirting up Anna’s nose for the previous week to the pharmacist for “safe disposal”.<br /><br />I skip other stories to come right up to date, where the main protagonist in the story is John. Or rather, John’s gallbladder. A very acute attack of cholecystitis resulted in us having to go the public hospital in Suva as the private hospital currently does not have a night time emergency care. It’s all kind of a blur, but the short version is that John received excellent clinical care in a hospital that, like public hospitals all over the world, is over-stretched and under-resourced. Fortunately, we were in the privileged position to be able to move to the private hospital after a few hours and John is now waiting patiently for his gallbladder to calm down so that the professionals can remove the wretched thing.<br /><br />I must come clean and confess that, as an American that worked and/or partook in the UK National Health System for over twenty years, I write this blog as a true believer in socialised medicine, or in less controversial terms, universal access to healthcare. In the post-Millennium Development Goal world, there will have to be an emphasis on increasing social justice to tackle entrenched inequities in both rich and poor countries alike. My medical travels around the world have only strengthened my resolve that this not only must happen in relation to healthcare, it can happen. Call me deluded if you like. I prefer the term optimistic.MaryBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14910505245295673426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7606733004457432182.post-31967437533951955062013-02-28T18:02:00.000-08:002013-02-28T18:02:27.655-08:00Accident of Birth<br />Anna’s school (the International School, Suva) had a blood drive recently. I was a regular blood donor in the US and a not-so regular blood donor in the UK. One thing that put me off was the fifteen-odd page questionnaire that you had to answer that almost inevitably disqualified you from giving blood because of some obscure (or not so obscure) reason. No such problems here. The form was a one-sided piece of paper and the haemoglobin check consisted of me pulling down my bottom eyelids to reveal my healthy red eye sockets. As for the minimum weight requirement, the chap asked me to get on the scale, but when I stood up to walk over to it, he told me not to bother.<br /><br />Besides the obvious altruistic benefits of giving blood there are other benefits. It’s the one time you actually have to eat cookies and take it easy for the rest of the day. I also get a delighted reaction when I tell them that my blood type is O negative. Though it is a complete accident of birth, it makes me feel bizarrely special to have the universal blood type. One thing that you must never do immediately after giving blood is have a few drinks at a dinner party. This can lead to dehydration and a severe hangover or vomiting in the neighbour’s hedge, or both. Don’t ask.<br /><br />John said recently that if he died suddenly not to feel sorry for him as he’s had an amazing life so far. Of course I want him to live for a very long time, but barring a couple of blips (tearaway at age 15 and the “is this everything phase?” aged 36) my life has been awesome too. A good proportion of that awesomeness can be put down to the opportunities afforded me because of those very same accidents of birth that led to my blood type. Being here in Fiji I am constantly reminded of the privileges that come with being born into a relatively well off and educated family.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-flb1l5Aip8M/UTAKy50Zo5I/AAAAAAAAAXo/n9tZOsIopLI/s1600/DSCN1206.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-flb1l5Aip8M/UTAKy50Zo5I/AAAAAAAAAXo/n9tZOsIopLI/s320/DSCN1206.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Two of the main reasons my life is so awesome.</div><br />One of the very frustrating things about being a trailing spouse in Fiji is that not only is it very difficult to get a job, but the law also makes it very hard to volunteer more than an hour a week. There is a lot of talent that could benefit local organisations going to waste as well as many families high-tailing it out of Fiji as soon as the working spouse’s contract is up because of these rules. However, there is a lot of energy spent in the expat community to try to make a difference in other ways.<br /><br />The <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/209581642444641/" target="_blank">Corona </a>group raises funds for local causes while providing a forum for expats (mostly trailing wives) and other interested people to get to know each other and learn about Fiji.&nbsp;I've&nbsp;previously <a href="http://mbfiji.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-trailing-spouse-and-other-new.html" target="_blank">blogged </a>about their meeting in October that was held at the Fiji Museum. This latest meeting included a very sobering talk by some of the staff at Pacific Medical Services that provide reproductive and sexual health services throughout Fiji. Ladies of the developed world – cherish your access to birth control!<br /><br />Last Friday, a couple of hours after dropping some cakes off at a home for disabled children (an idea that was suggested at the Corona meeting), I was on the boat with Anna and John on our way to <a href="http://www.leleuvia.com/" target="_blank">Leleuvia Island Resort</a>. It’s that accident of birth thing again – the yawning chasm between the haves and the have nots that is easy to ignore until you happen to catch sight of someone over on the other side. Even then it’s tempting to look away because it’s hard to know what to do and easier to get distracted than continue to contemplate deep injustice (“Am I being patronising?” “Am I doing enough?” “Oooh, that cafe does a nice iced coffee.”)<br /><br />Anna had a rotten weekend as she woke up with a stinking cold on Saturday morning, but did manage to rally for a snorkel and a round of beach volleyball in the afternoon. John took me for a dive off the beach to see if I could remember how. It was just like riding a bicycle, even after twenty years. The only problem was that in the intervening years the tanks got a lot heavier and the weights a lot lighter. If anyone saw us, they’d have thought that we were being romantic, swimming along while hold hands. Actually, I&nbsp;wasn't&nbsp;wearing enough weight to ballast my body fat, so John was preventing me from bobbing up to the surface like a cork. We followed that up with a spectacular dive at a site called the Fish Market off of Motoriki where we saw sharks, barracuda and other big fish. I can’t wait to get into the water again.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qwfeJ4Rb9xw/UTAIrHRP4wI/AAAAAAAAAXc/w4PJ-J5ZA-0/s1600/Mary03.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qwfeJ4Rb9xw/UTAIrHRP4wI/AAAAAAAAAXc/w4PJ-J5ZA-0/s320/Mary03.png" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">The numbers on the gauges got smaller since the last time I dived in 1991.</div><br />A hair shirt here is out of the question as there are so many amazing things to enjoy, and besides it would be too sweaty. However, a purposeful mindfulness of the fact that many things that I consider a right would be judged by a large proportion of the world’s population as a privilege and the rest as an impossibility is something that I will endeavour to achieve.<br /><div><br /></div>MaryBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14910505245295673426noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7606733004457432182.post-77895997904199725112013-02-11T21:23:00.001-08:002013-02-12T10:43:50.578-08:00Peering out from beneath the parasol<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I have taken to roaming the streets of Suva armed with a large USP multi-coloured golf umbrella. This isn’t because of the rain (though it does come in handy for that) but rather to keep my brain from being braised inside of my skull. While you’ve been digging snow from your driveways,&nbsp;</span>I've<span style="font-family: inherit;">&nbsp;been cooked into a state of tropical torpor which I can occasionally rouse myself from with liberal doses of air conditioning, gin &amp; tonics and the odd trip to the beach.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">One wonders how I could possibly have so many places to go and so many things to do without being in paid employment (that is coming, but on island time). As we have no car, I travel by taxi or bus. I know that I’ve blogged about the taxi drivers here before, but I had three last week that are worth mentioning. One drove at speeds faster on the roads of Suva than I’d ever been on the island before. His driving technique was to drive at great speed, anticipating that other drivers would either drive sensibly or just get out of his way. I suspect that he may not live much longer. The next one drove very slowly but entirely erratically. I imagine that his vision was somewhat impaired. Finally, there was the personable chap whose driving was completely normal, but had Fiji Water bottle half full of what I suspect was urine sloshing around next to the gear shift.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Last Wednesday, Anna and I (having survived the taxi trip into town) were having a skiving afternoon watching Django at the cinema when the lights came on and the usher appeared. She announced that there was a tsunami warning and we could either stay to finish the movie or get a voucher to return to the cinema another day. The cinema is right on the harbourside and while we were really enjoying the movie, seeking higher ground seemed like the sensible option. Ironically, we’d just seen the trailer for The Impossible with Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor which is about the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami and decided that we&nbsp;</span>wouldn't<span style="font-family: inherit;">&nbsp;want to see it because we live on a tsunami-prone tropical island. When we emerged from the theatre, blinking against the sunlight, traffic was at a standstill and the pavements were full of people.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Previously&nbsp;</span>I've<span style="font-family: inherit;">&nbsp;experienced two types of natural disasters: earthquakes, which you can do bugger-all about when they strike except dive for cover, and hurricanes, which you have days to prepare for. I was at a bit of a loss with what to do next. Run to the top of the nearest tall building? Walk the 4ish miles home which is outside of the tsunami danger area? I literally had no idea if we had two minutes or two hours in which to act so I asked a couple who were studying a smart phone. According to them we had 2 hours to get to higher ground. Jumping into a taxi was out of the question as they were all full and&nbsp;</span>weren't<span style="font-family: inherit;">&nbsp;going anywhere anyway.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OZM8zfUw5NQ/URnQEzQyrYI/AAAAAAAAAVI/iwzFH8_KXnQ/s1600/DSCN1085.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OZM8zfUw5NQ/URnQEzQyrYI/AAAAAAAAAVI/iwzFH8_KXnQ/s320/DSCN1085.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Traffic and people leaving town towards higher ground</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So we started to walk uphill out of town. I was really impressed by the calm, orderly and friendly atmosphere. The only upset person we saw was a hysterical ten-ish year old. We overheard her expat mother say “don’t worry, it won’t be like the movie” when we walked by. I will refrain from commenting on parenting skills, though I suspect taking a child that age to see The Impossible was perhaps a mistake and may have created neuroses that will last a lifetime.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The sun was searing, but we walked most of the way home before Anna’s friend stopped to give us a lift the rest of the way. My shirt was literally soaked in sweat (I&nbsp;</span>didn't<span style="font-family: inherit;">&nbsp;have had my brolly with me), but before I showered we had to prepare for the impending disaster. This included filling up water bottles and posting updates on Twitter and Facebook.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Fortunately, just as an email from the US Embassy popped into my inbox telling me to prepare for the tsunami, a friend rang to say that the warning had been called off.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">You all may be wondering where John was during all of this. Earlier that day, he had rung me from a waterside hotel where he was attending a conference just out of town to tell me that his phone battery was nearly dead. Despite me saying regularly that we should have a family plan in case of an emergency (like a tsunami) we&nbsp;</span></span><span style="line-height: 17.77777862548828px;">hadn't</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">&nbsp;made one. Well, at least we know what the first rule of the emergency plan will be. Keep your bloody phone charged.</span></span><br /><div><br /></div>MaryBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14910505245295673426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7606733004457432182.post-54222382800506135202013-01-24T22:28:00.000-08:002013-01-25T01:34:42.355-08:00Guilty pleasures<br /><div class="MsoNoSpacing">I enjoy many guilty pleasures. Hot dogs, for instance. I love them – sliced and heated with baked beans, rolled in a flour tortilla with mild cheddar and microwaved until the cheese oozes out of the ends or stuffed into a wonder-bread bun and slathered with bright yellow American mustard. I love a glass of cool white wine when I cook dinner, even if I’m on my own. I love getting my eyebrows waxed in a beautifying, though slightly sado-masochistic sort of way. </div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">However, one of the things that I get the greatest pleasure from is.....cemeteries. Weird, I know. This is not something new. Ever since I was old enough to be able to drive a car, I have been swerving into gravelly lay-bys to inspect old cemeteries. Of course, in California, this meant any grave pre-1920. When I moved to the east coast of the US, I discovered really old graves. When I moved to rural Northumberland in northern England, I was in churchyard heaven. My children were forever getting irritated with me for stopping suddenly on country roads, knowing without even looking up from their Game Boys that they could either join me for a drizzly game of spot the <i>memento mori</i> or be left in the car. Anna made the mistake of once refusing to come with me and Alex and it was only around twenty minutes later we heard her, hysterical with fear, alone on the other side of the church looking for us. </div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">I am not alone in this obsession. Just ask my <a href="http://www.findagrave.com/">www.findagrave.com</a> cyber-companions. This is where it all gets a little strange (or rather, stranger). If you’re a keen family historian and you know where your ancestor is buried, you can go to this site and ask for a volunteer to go hunt for their headstone, photograph it and post the photo. Having fulfilled several of these photo requests at the cemetery that abuts my late sister’s house in Holyoke, Massachusetts, I was delighted to see that there was a pending photo request at Suva Cemetery that I could spend my free time hunting for.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">Suva cemetery sprawls over a hillside as you approach the city from the west. Ironically, there is a government-sponsored billboard on the roadside opposite the cemetery that proclaims something like “Welcome to Suva – Fiji’s healthy city!” After walking Anna to the bus stop on her first day of school (at 7am) I caught a taxi to the cemetery. Armed with a large umbrella to keep out of the sun, a bottle of water and a camera, I intrepidly dodged commuter traffic across Suva’s main road to the unimpressive gates. Almost immediately it was apparent that not only were my flip flops completely inappropriate (despite being order from an orthopaedically correct old lady catalogue), but that I should have also brought a emergency beacon in case I fell into one of the large holes that pock-marked the grounds.</div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lLn82uLotDo/UQIid0-1EnI/AAAAAAAAAUo/ov8xA4sjeNg/s1600/Optimized-DSCN1022.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lLn82uLotDo/UQIid0-1EnI/AAAAAAAAAUo/ov8xA4sjeNg/s320/Optimized-DSCN1022.JPG" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">There are a lot of young sailors buried here.</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">The other thing that was obvious was that there was absolutely no way that I was going to locate poor Mr Mantell’s grave that morning. The cemetery was bigger on the inside than it looked on the outside, with irregular boundaries and meandering lines of headstones that were impossible to follow in a systematic fashion. And being an easily distracted sort, I kept forgetting about the holes.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9uO8BI4b7Lw/UQIi-RX66nI/AAAAAAAAAUw/ina-pVj7F70/s1600/Optimized-DSCN1009.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9uO8BI4b7Lw/UQIi-RX66nI/AAAAAAAAAUw/ina-pVj7F70/s320/Optimized-DSCN1009.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Some estimates state that up to 14% of the Fijian population died in the 1918/19 influenza pandemic</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNoSpacing">I never feel scared in cemeteries, but I do feel that the air is thick with stories, even if I am making most of them up myself from the scant information on the headstones. In the older parts of the cemetery I felt deeply moved as I read some of the inscriptions. Young seaman, missionaries, small children, many buried singly, not in family plots which resonated the displacement chord that is forever humming in my heart here in Fiji.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">By 8:50am Mr Mantell was still eluding me and I was starting to think that I might collapse from heat stroke, so I sat in one of the open shaded <i>bures</i>, looked out at the harbour and let the breeze cool me down contemplating a rather long verse on a grave on one of the last graves I’d walked past:</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><i>Master, I've filled my contract, wrought in Thy many lands; <o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><i>Not by my sins wilt Thou judge me, but by the work of my hands. <o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><i>Master, I've done Thy bidding, and the light is low in the west, <o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><i>And the long, long shift is over... Master, I've earned it.....Rest.<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">This was on a grave of a 24 year old who died in 1921 (Late Lieut. Royal Field Artillery). One can only imagine the toil that he’d endured to have his parents feel like his shift was over so early.*</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">How privileged I am to be the grand old age of 48 and still be fit and greedy for everything that I love and find interesting! Even if those things include processed meat products, depilation and hanging out with dead people. And blogging, let’s not forget blogging.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">*An interesting post-script to this blog is that the verse is from a poem by Robert Service called The Song of the Wage-Slave. Also, the young man is Alan Ross Wilkins, an Australian, whose war diary was published for private circulation in 1922. Well, I know what I’ll be doing on my next trip to Australia – going to the National Library to have a look at it. That’s probably not normal, I know. But afterwards I’ll go to the pub and have a hot dog and a large glass of chardonnay.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div>MaryBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14910505245295673426noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7606733004457432182.post-86104261207902721892013-01-17T22:30:00.002-08:002015-04-24T00:46:16.768-07:00Always look on the bright side of life*<div class="MsoNoSpacing">Anna came back from the UK. It was always going to be a bit of a gamble letting her go back to visit so soon after we arrived as there was a district possibility that she’d seek asylum with a willing aunt, her brother or an ex-neighbour. But after five weeks of indulging in a proper English Christmas (including three proper Christmas dinners) she was ready to come “home” to Fiji. She starts her international baccalaureate next week, which will be the first proper work that she’s done since June 2012 when she finished her GCSEs before we moved. I expect her brain will hurt for the first couple of weeks.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">My job hunt is progressing nicely. I have been fortunate to get a position at the Ministry of Health working on maternal and child health information systems. From the responses that I get from fellow expats (shock, surprise, hearty congratulations) I assume that it’s fairly unusual for the trailing spouse to sort out employment in such a short time here. Luckily, my skills fit in nicely with the work around some of the health-related Millennium Development Goals. Though I have enjoyed my time off, I am relieved and excited about starting work. Believe me, I know that this is a privileged situation to be in.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">In my progression from not having a furry pet larger than a gerbil in over twenty years to becoming a certified CCL (crazy cat lady), I have travelled a great distance. To Nadi and back, in fact. On the bus on the way back from Nadi after picking Anna up at the airport, I got a phone call from the vet’s office in Suva (currently, the only practicing vet in town) to say that she needed to extend her leave by a week. Poor Reg was barely limping along with his suppurating leg wound. A few phone calls later, and we’d hired a car so that we could drive back to Nadi the next day with Reg to see the vets at Animals Fiji.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">Taking a sick cat on a 3 ½ hour drive requires a certain amount of planning. Litter tray? Check. Towels? Check. Goat’s milk? Check. Fresh tuna offcuts from the my favourite place to buy fish, Island Ika in Toorak? Check. Poor Anna sat in the back with the mewling Reg, who was not interested in the sashimi or milk, but was rather intent on escaping from a moving vehicle. Eventually we pulled up at <a href="http://www.animalsfiji.org/" target="_blank">Animals Fiji</a> and my heart sank. A couple of make-shift looking buildings with a lot of animals wandering about did not instil confidence. But never judge a book by its cover! What wonderful staff, obviously working on a shoe-string (BTW - consider them if you're a local looking for a charity to donate to). Thirty minutes later we were parked up at McDonalds enjoying our lunch. Again, Reg turned up his nose at the tuna and discovered a love of fries (after we forced down the new antibiotics).</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">The trip home was much more pleasant as Reg, who had not shut up for the previous five hours, passed out from exhaustion and stayed curled up in Anna’s lap the entire way home. He’s now almost completely recovered but is irrevocably spoiled. </div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6BNTF6gh_m4/VTn0m7HVp7I/AAAAAAAAA0Y/XurTr_P-AkM/s1600/Khali%2Band%2BReg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6BNTF6gh_m4/VTn0m7HVp7I/AAAAAAAAA0Y/XurTr_P-AkM/s1600/Khali%2Band%2BReg.jpg" height="239" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">Reg sleeps to recuperate while Khali just looks gorgeous.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">Alex has booked his flights for coming to visit in March during his Easter break. Travelling here is a journey, not just a trip. The investment cash and time are both substantial – it takes around 40 hours each way to Newcastle, which means that you spend four days of your holiday travelling (though I think that it works out that you only actually lose three calendar days which is too taxing for my brain to compute). I’m making plans for the week that his visit and Anna’s school holiday overlap to go and stay in a resort. It’s bizarre but strangely pleasing to think that I’ll have to book time off of work.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">*For the full lyrics of Eric Idle's song, click <a href="http://www.risa.co.uk/sla/song.php?songid=22387" target="_blank">here</a>.</div><br />MaryBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14910505245295673426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7606733004457432182.post-24636184871597327062013-01-06T21:14:00.000-08:002013-01-06T21:14:30.589-08:00Warning: this post contains spleen venting<br />First thoughts on what it would be like to move to Fiji? Endless sun, sand and sea? Ha! Let me dispel you of this notion once and for all. True if you move to a resort and work as a divemaster your life will all of those things and more, I’m sure. But for most of us that have jobs that require sitting at a desk, living in Fiji means living and working in Suva, and at the moment, Suva is in my bad books.<br /><br />Over the last few days, things have happened that have really tested my affection for this hot, sweaty place. First, I misplaced my passport. Now it would be churlish to blame this momentary lapse of being a responsible adult on where we live. However, I had stashed it away somewhere safe for the duration of Cyclone Evan and on going to retrieve it I could not find it. John and I have searched everywhere in the house at least twice and still no luck. It was about to expire anyway, but my main record of travel over the last ten years has disappeared in a post-storm, bereavement-fueled&nbsp;fug.<br /><br />Of course you need to file a police report to replace a lost passport. Obtaining the police report required three trips by taxi to the police station. To be completely fair to the Fijian police, I never had to wait more than ten minute to be told to come back later and on the third trip, it took less than five minutes for the neatly typed, very boring police report to be placed in my hands.<br /><br />Also, I have had two attempts to get my American passport photo taken. The place that takes them here specialises in taking the least attractive photos ever. For the next ten years, my glowering stare from beneath my perspiring brow in my passport photo will be a reminder of our time in Fiji. If you plan to move abroad, be sure to have a couple of different photo IDs besides your passport and some decent passport photos. It could save you a lot of bother.<br /><br />Our beloved little Reg, the cutest, scruffiest kitten this side of the International Date Line, broke his leg on Friday. Over the weekend, he managed to progress it from a greenstick to an infected compound fracture. Problem is that the only vet in Suva left for her week-long holiday on Friday afternoon. &nbsp;Yes, you heard me right - THE ONLY VET IN SUVA. Even the Society for the Protection of Animals in Suva does not have access to a vet until February. Here, animal life is cheap. If you’re seriously attached to your animals, I would suggest that you keep Fiji as an expat destination off your list and check the availability of veterinary care wherever you’re thinking about going.<br /><br />We had a sleepless night nursing him. Thankfully, I’m married to a mad scientist who happened to have a bottle of powered ampicillin in his office left over from an experiment, so a slug of that mixed with goat’s milk in a syringe, cooling with damp towels and the occasional cuddle kept him alive until we got him to the vet’s this morning. He’s only receiving nursing care though, so we’re hoping for the best but expecting the worst.<br /><br />Finally, after dropping Reg off at the vet’s this morning, I fell asleep for an hour and woke to no power. It was only after another hour or so that I realised that we were the only ones in this situation in our neighbourhood. In our house, that’s how you can tell that the electricity bill is overdue - they turn off your power. Of course it does help if you receive the bill. The timing of the bill arrival is completely random. I had suspected that this might happen so last week I tried to put some money towards our account but was told that they needed a copy of the bill or the amount due to pay it. It is like a Kafkaesque nightmare.&nbsp;Another trip into town to pay the bill, a six hour wait and the power is back on.<br /><br />Maybe I’ll feel a little better now that the ceiling fans are on,&nbsp;I've&nbsp;eaten some delicious half-melted ice cream from the freezer and&nbsp;I've&nbsp;vented in this post.<br /><div><br /></div>MaryBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14910505245295673426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7606733004457432182.post-68773988015439854852013-01-02T22:00:00.000-08:002013-01-03T16:33:40.340-08:00Off with her head!<br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Yesterday, the Queen’s head disappeared from Fiji’s banknotes. The government has made a short commercial to be played in cinemas explaining the new banknotes, which John and I saw while waiting for The Hobbit to start yesterday. This move is completely understandable as Fiji was kicked out of the Commonwealth in 2009 after delaying elections after the 2008 coup (elections won’t be held until 2014). However, is feels little disrespectful to see a large insect crawling onto the space where Lizzie’s face peered out from moments earlier, even in the name of celebrating the biodiversity of these wonderful islands.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-i_SzSgtBfrY/UOUbZqiW5wI/AAAAAAAAAUQ/SnM3IoZm22M/s1600/Queen.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-i_SzSgtBfrY/UOUbZqiW5wI/AAAAAAAAAUQ/SnM3IoZm22M/s320/Queen.png" width="222" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It wasn't the best picture of the Queen anyway.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It’s been a while since I last posted because I've been busy snorkelling or being in either a languid or a slightly inebriated state during our amazing trip to Vanua Levu over the Christmas holidays. Our power finally came on in the wee hours of the 23<sup>rd</sup>, shortly before we took an early morning taxi to airport to await our flight to Savusavu. There were only two small Pacific Air prop planes at the airport that morning and one was not fit to fly, so we had to wait for the other one to fly wherever it was going, then come back (empty) before we could take off. We could see small islands and complex reef systems almost the entire way before making our descent through a small valley, the height of which made it seem like you could reach out and grab coconuts off of the trees.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://sphotos-a.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/621075_10152393335810430_1287333460_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="http://sphotos-a.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/621075_10152393335810430_1287333460_o.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The men's toilets and the welcoming committee at Savusavu Airport</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">My first impression of Savusavu itself is that it was just what I thought Fiji would be like before we moved here. Savusavu Bay is unbelievably beautiful and we enjoyed the view from the balcony at our room at the Hot Springs Hotel. The name of the hotel is slightly misleading as they don’t really have hot water at the hotel. They installed a geothermal water heating system which meant that (in our room anyway) when you turned the hot water tap on there was only a 50/50 chance that hot water would come out.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://sphotos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/267060_10152381829615430_1717796319_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="237" src="http://sphotos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/267060_10152381829615430_1717796319_o.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">The view over Savusavu Bay from the Hot Springs Hotel</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Our ultimate destination, however, was the <a href="http://www.thepearlshackfiji.com/" target="_blank">Pearl Shack</a> on the south shore of the island. The owner picked us up from the hotel on Christmas Eve morning and kindly took us into town to do our grocery shopping. What a nightmare! Savusavu is not a big town (probably around 5000 people), but every single resident was squeezed into the narrow aisles of the supermarket that morning. The market was the same. I battled the feeling of claustrophobia to try to buy what I could off of my list, but in the end I kind of gave up so we ended up with a selection of weird stuff to eat. John had been in charge of going to the liquor store, and with steely determination did an admirable job. Fortunately the previous occupants of “the shack” had left a good supply of condiments or the food might have become rather boring.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I could have written an entire post just about the shack. In fact I did, but it was so tedious in its lyrical waxing that I thought that I’d make everyone hate me if I published it. It was a completely relaxing, healing place. The&nbsp;</span>snorkeling<span style="font-family: inherit;">&nbsp;was unbelievable. Parts of the back reef were really interesting with enormous heads of coral and a good diversity of fish, but the fore reef was stunning. A walk across the reef pavement in low tide, followed by a short snorkel in about half a metre of water led to a drop off to around 20-30 meters. The wall was covered in healthy coral. John took loads of video, most of which came out kind of rubbish because his camera started to fog up. The reef went on for a long way, but we&nbsp;</span>didn't<span style="font-family: inherit;">&nbsp;need to venture too far to stay amused. Besides, once you got out too far, the drop off was too pelagic to be comfortable without eyes in the back of your head. It’s funny how the Jaws theme tune just pops into your head at the most inopportune times.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Besides&nbsp;</span>snorkeling<span style="font-family: inherit;">&nbsp; we kayaked, cooked (we&nbsp;</span>didn't<span style="font-family: inherit;">&nbsp;eat out once we got to the shack), drank and did silly things like attempt a romantic canoodle in the two person hammock after some champagne. This ended badly with both of us stuck with our feet up in the air and our heads pile-driven into the sand. John worked on teaching himself the corals of Fiji and I wasted an embarrassing number of hours reading the Game of Throne series.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We came back to Suva to see in the New Year. Our “celebration” consisted of Thai beef salad and champagne on the patio with the kittens and enough episodes of Rome to see us to midnight. Bliss.&nbsp;</span></span>MaryBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14910505245295673426noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7606733004457432182.post-14401057489763452332012-12-22T10:38:00.000-08:002012-12-22T10:38:14.658-08:00Sleepless in Suva<br /><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The tale of our encounter with Cyclone Evan starts with Mummy Cat pooing and meowing outside of our bedroom door in the wee hours of Monday morning. I guess that her agitated behaviour was due to the drop in barometric pressure or some such animal-ESP type thing. Anyway, once the hallway was cleaned, she continued to mewl. John put a pillow over his head to drown her out. Eventually I dropped off and woke a little while later to no noise except the growing wind and driving rain. I got up to check on Mummy Cat and&nbsp;couldn't&nbsp;find either her or the kittens in the house, but assumed that they must have found somewhere clever to hide. As I turned to go back up stairs, I was horrified to hear a kitten squeaking outside.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There was poor little Reg, wet and shivering, sitting outside on the front lawn all on his own. Mummy Cat, I assume, was trying to show the kittens how to survive in the bush during a storm. Reg, having shimmied through a torn window screen, had thought better of it once outside. After calling for them for a minute of two, Mummy Cat and Khali raced back out of the bush into the house. They did not try to get outside again for the duration.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So there I was, up at the crack of dawn, the weather worsening. There was nothing for it but to make scones for breakfast. We Skyped with the children and family in the UK, taking the iPad outside to show them the wind rattled trees which at the time didn’t look very impressive. Coming back into the house, we discovered the first casualty of the storm – the kittens had eaten my scones.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For most of the day, it was blowing a gale rather than hurricane force winds. We took garden chairs out to our covered garage and watched two trees nearly come down (from a safe distance). One was absolutely fascinating. First the ground heaved around the base during each gust, then a crack appeared in the lawn, then eventually you could see long strands of thick roots being pulled out of the ground as the gusts got stronger. The tree still stands, but rests at an angle against the fence. I guess it will have to be chopped down. Pity after such a tenacious struggle. The other was a lovely Royal Palm, which now rests askew on the tree next to it.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8ZrMdn10PbY/UNX8Q2_fbRI/AAAAAAAAATo/0n8rP_IZHlQ/s1600/DSCN1426.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8ZrMdn10PbY/UNX8Q2_fbRI/AAAAAAAAATo/0n8rP_IZHlQ/s320/DSCN1426.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">One of the victims of the storm (the tree on the right, not me on the left)</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Eventually, when we were actually a little chilly, we came inside, had hot showers, got comfy on the sofa and started to watch an episode of Rome (which is excellent, by the way). Halfway through it we lost power, so we resorted to playing games (Yahtzee and cribbage) and made pizza. In the evening it began to calm down so we relaxed a little, thinking that the worst of it was over. Then BAM - the wind picked up to what appeared to be hurricane force winds, the rain being blasted into the windows in a weird high-power mist.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7xQZyOKv5Mc/UNX9onaxUJI/AAAAAAAAAT4/isKN9nXMgIs/s1600/DSCN1416.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7xQZyOKv5Mc/UNX9onaxUJI/AAAAAAAAAT4/isKN9nXMgIs/s320/DSCN1416.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Cyclone pizza - note that I am not drinking so that I can keeps my wits about me. No comment about John.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: inherit;">One of the nice things about being married for such a long time is that we often think the same thing at the same time. We didn’t waste any time discussing it, we just went downstairs and began to get the linen cupboard ready for occupation. Think Harry Potter’s room under the stairs but with an eye-watering aroma of mothballs. We provisioned it with the cat carrier (without cats) and a bottle of water and sat around for a bit, wondering if it was bad enough to take cover. Again, the wind started to calm down a bit and exhausted, we went to bed. John was snoring instantly (he put in earplugs), but I was up and down most of the night dreaming strange dreams when I did sleep.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We woke up to strong wind and some rain, but the worst of it was over. We had banana pancakes and wandered about the campus taking pictures of what little damage had occurred. Our side of the island got off lightly compared to other side, though amazingly there have been no reported casualties so far. Around lunch time the power came on (we never lost water) and we spend the rest of the day laying about in a languid state watching Rome (we nearly jumped out of our skin when we turned the telly on – we’d had it so loud the day before in the storm), napping and finally drinking a bottle of post-Evan champagne outside with the sky turning the most amazing colours.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VZoehlgC11E/UNX89X1PHCI/AAAAAAAAATw/ir1bDVHaPsI/s1600/DSCN1455.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VZoehlgC11E/UNX89X1PHCI/AAAAAAAAATw/ir1bDVHaPsI/s320/DSCN1455.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The university bure with fetchingly placed downed palm tree.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It appeared we’d got off lightly. Then on Wednesday lunchtime we lost water and power and it is Friday lunchtime and the power company is still not giving us any indication of when things will be back to normal. Living in the tropics with all modern&nbsp;accouterments&nbsp;is exhausting. Living in the tropics without so much as a refrigerator or a ceiling fan during the night is hell. Last night (2<sup>nd</sup> power-free night) I struggled to rouse myself when I realised I was sleeping with my eyes open. It’s so still that the occasional drip of water off of the roof and onto the barbeque sounds like cymbals being clashed.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And the really bizarre thing is that it’s nearly Christmas! It has never seemed less like Christmas in my entire life. I am so sad, thinking about the children being so far away, with some pretender renting our house, sitting in front of our fire, gazing at our views across the River Tyne. John, however, seems more sanguine as demonstrated by this exchange last night at a waterside bar while having a beer:</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Me: I miss the children.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Him: (Silence)</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Me: The kittens just&nbsp;aren't&nbsp;a satisfactory substitute.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Him: Oh, I thought you were referring to the kittens in the first place.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So despite the mental solidarity honed by over twenty years of marriage, sometimes we are planets apart.</span></span><br />MaryBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14910505245295673426noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7606733004457432182.post-84621092222817055612012-12-13T17:20:00.000-08:002012-12-13T17:20:09.577-08:00Annus Horribilis<br />2012. What a rubbish year. I lost my lovely sister, my wonderful mother and my mother in law. I said goodbye to my friends and family in the UK with great sadness to move to Fiji. I said farewell to my work colleagues at the Regional Maternity Survey Office leaving them to the vagaries of the UK coalition government who have systematically destroyed an internationally enviable public health system. Goodbye 2012 and good riddance.<br /><br />Except 2012 isn’t finished with me yet. Cyclone Evan is slowly making a u-turn whilst sitting on top of Samoa and is setting its sights on Fiji.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vVPnEhXPqWI/UMp8UVRJ5OI/AAAAAAAAATM/dW8bO1DhgKQ/s1600/Evan.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="296" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vVPnEhXPqWI/UMp8UVRJ5OI/AAAAAAAAATM/dW8bO1DhgKQ/s320/Evan.gif" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Evan on Friday afternoon (Fiji time).</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>Those of you that have known me for a long time know that John and I have been here before. In 1989 on the island of St Croix in the US Virgin Islands, Hurricane Hugo nearly destroyed us. We lost our jobs, our home and all of our wedding presents (except the horrible ones that we’d put in the closet). What we like to say is that we (barely) survived Hurricane Hugo. A storm is not just the actual rain and wind, though those are scary and destructive enough, but the aftermath. No power, no telephone, mosquitoes breeding in stagnant water carrying dengue fever, evacuation chaos, looting, etc...<br /><br />It has been dismaying to see how unconcerned people are here about this storm. Some of our friends and neighbours in St Croix were also blasé about Hugo. The last hurricane that had made a serious impact on the island was in the late 1920s so as far as most people were concerned, a hurricane was something that everyone got vaguely worked up about for very little. &nbsp;As of early this morning, I appeared to be the only one stocking up on provisions – water, batteries, insect repellent, cat food (for the cats), first aid stuff, etc... Let’s just hope that Cyclone Evan passes us by and I’m stuck with a lot of dried pasta.<br /><br />Fortunately Anna is away in the UK for Christmas, so they’ll be enough room in the linen cupboard for me, John and the cats if things get too wild. I was so sad that she&nbsp;wasn't&nbsp;going to be here for Christmas, now I’m just relieved. In my experience, in the battle between man versus nature, man always loses when Mother Nature is serious enough.<br /><br />It is difficult to tie in the discussion about the approaching storm with the death of my mother, Marianna Wieder van Erp earlier this week, so I’m just going to jump straight to it. My lovely mother died a gentle death with very good hospice care (<a href="http://www.pathwayshealth.org/" target="_blank">by Pathways</a>) in the company of my surviving sisters. They, my brother, sister in law and his grown up girls have worked so hard since she fell ill in November – her prognosis was a moving target so what everyone was supposed to be doing or feeling kept changing. When I left her at the end of November, she was in rehab, planning to go into assisted living. I was convinced that I’d see her again in the spring. I’m very glad that I got to spend those ten days together, massaging her feet with Fijian coconut oil and filling her in on the minutia of my existence when she was too tired to talk. Precious moments that I treasured while they were happening, the memories of my sister’s passing being so fresh.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://sphotos-e.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/336_599808945933_6510_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://sphotos-e.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/336_599808945933_6510_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">At a winery during one of the family reunions my mother was generous enough to host in 2009. She and my dad cemented our family together with these gatherings.</div><br />One of my favourite quotes is by Gore Vidal – “Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies”. Call me a cynic, but I think this is true for everyone except in the case of parents (particularly mothers) who rejoice in their children’s successes without reservation. &nbsp;I was really happy that my sisters were able to tell my mother that I have a job now, because I’m certain that besides John (who has his eye on the bank balance) my mother would have been the happiest person on the planet about it.<br /><br />I look forward to posting again soon to tell you about how all of our preparations for the storm were for nought. Maybe I’ll throw a party next week and serve pasta and cat food.<br /><div><br /></div>MaryBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14910505245295673426noreply@blogger.com1